"You say that you still love me, and yet you will not be mine! When, forgetting what so many people in society take for their rule of conduct, I determined to give you my name, to call you my wife, to live for you alone, someone forbids you to love me, to listen to me; and instantly you change your manner toward me, instantly you determine to cease to see me, and I must needs renounce my dearest hopes! No, you do not love me; if you shared my love, you would care more for me than for anybody else. But, mademoiselle, what power over you has this person to whom you sacrifice me? It is not your father; you have told me several times that you had no parents. By what right does this person, who keeps out of sight so mysteriously, pretend to separate you from me? Where is this person—whom I would see, know, and speak to?"
"No, no! do not think of it," cried Isaure. "Oh! I beg you, if you still love me, do not try to make that person’s acquaintance—he does not wish, has never wished to be known, to be seen."
"He does not wish," said Edouard angrily. "Very good! it is a man; you have betrayed yourself!"
"Betrayed myself!" replied Isaure, raising her lovely eyes, streaming with tears, to heaven; "what harm is there in its being a man?"
"Who is this man? What power has he over you?"
"Who he is, I do not myself know; but he has the strongest, the most sacred rights over me—those of gratitude. It is to him that I owe everything."
"That you owe everything! what? were you not adopted and brought up by the honest peasants who lived in this house? Was it not to them alone that you owe gratitude?"
"Oh, no! it was not to them alone. Those good people who lived here loved me dearly, I know; but when they took me into their family, and treated me as their own daughter, they simply obeyed the orders of the man whom I must obey to-day! I am doing wrong even now in telling you all this; he forbade me to do it."
"When a man has only honorable intentions, he does not conceal himself thus, he does not envelop himself with so much mystery; and if this person desires only your happiness, why does he forbid you to love me, to become my wife?"
"Your wife! No, he told me that I could never be any man’s wife, that I must not see you any more, must not receive you here; he said also that that would make people think ill of me. Alas! I did not know that it was wrong to love to be with you."