"My dear Alfred, you sacrificed your love for Isaure to me; you desired that I should be happy; you saw my extreme passion for that girl. Well! to reward my love, she refuses to see me again. I must abandon all hope of marrying her. When I forget that she is only a peasant, nameless, penniless, it is she who refuses to be mine!"
"Who told you that?"
"She herself; I left her only a moment ago."
"What reasons does she give you?"
"The obedience which she owes to a man who forbids her to see me again."
"Then I was not misinformed," cried Alfred, after a moment.
"What? what do you mean?"
"Listen! two nights ago, when I went to examine the old tower, I did find someone there—that vagabond whom we have met so often in the mountains; he declared that he had made his way into the château at night for the purpose of speaking to me secretly, and he told me that Isaure was unworthy of your love, that he had been suspicious of her conduct for a long time, and that he had at last acquired the certainty that she went to the White House at night, to see a man who had just arrived there."
"The traitor! She goes to see him at night; and to think that I respected her sincerity, her innocence, and was afraid of offending her delicacy! Ah! my friend, these women! Oh! I am suffocating, I cannot stand it; I have a weight at my heart which oppresses me, which is killing me!"
"Come, come, Edouard, be a man; be yourself; does a woman who betrays us deserve that we should regret her?"