“I have not asked you to marry me,” whispered Paul, his voice trembling a little. “I told you I loved you—no man ever loved a woman more than I love you—but I don’t think that I am any match for you, Lucie, and it never seemed to me quite right that I should take advantage of all the childish things you said to me when we were boy and girl, or of your rashness and imprudence now, for Lucie, you are a very rash and imprudent girl.”
“I am the most prudent person living,” whispered Lucie, sidling up to him. “I don’t wish to be married for my money and you are the only man I know who would marry me quicker without my fortune than with it—so Paul—”
Paul made one last hopeless and quite desperate stand.
“Oh, Lucie,” he said, “what a villain I am ever to have gone near you after I saw—”
“So you saw it, did you?” said Lucie, smiling, but still trembling. “Everybody else saw it—the groom knows it, actually—it’s quite ridiculous”—and then Paul surrendered. A sudden revelation came to him from Lucie’s eyes that his two thousand francs a year mattered no more than her millions—that it was not a question of francs, but of the great master passion, which, when it enters lordly into the abode of a man’s or a woman’s heart, drives out everything else and reigns supreme.
They sat on a fallen tree and talked in whispers, those echoes of the heart, until the shadows grew long, and it was Lucie who had to remind Paul that it was time to go home. The horses, which had stood still meanwhile, cocked their ears knowingly at Paul when he swung Lucie into her saddle. They never saw the belated groom at all, nor cared what had become of him as they rode back through the dying glow of the autumn afternoon to the Château Bernard. Lucie ran up the stone steps of the château, followed by Paul. At the prospect of meeting Madame Bernard, this dashing young sublieutenant of dragoons felt as hopeless and helpless as a drenched hen. It was one thing to tell Lucie of his love in the forest glade, to the music of the silvery rippling spring, with the red sun making a somber glory all around them and with no one except the horses to listen, but to tell the chatelaine of the Château Bernard about his two thousand francs the year was almost more than Paul could stand. Lucie led the way into Madame Bernard’s little drawing-room. A wood fire was crackling on the hearth, for the evening had grown chilly, and Madame Bernard, stately and timid, imposing and nervous, with her everlasting embroidery, sat by the table on which stood candles in tall silver candlesticks. Lucie went up and, putting her arm around the neck of the fierce-eyed and craven-hearted old lady, and seating herself on the arm of the chair, tipped the handsome old face up and kissed her.
“Grandmama,” she said, “I have proposed and have been accepted. Paul says he will marry me.”
Paul glared at Lucie. She was such an unconscionable joker. He came forward, however, and said in his best manner, which was a very fine manner:
“Madame, it is I who proposed to Mademoiselle Lucie. If I did not love her so much I should apologize for it, because I feel that she is entitled to more of birth and of fortune and of rank than I can give her. But I can give her more devotion and loyalty than any other man living—of that I feel sure.”