Madame de Condillac stood watching him, her face composed, her glance cold. She was like some stalwart oak, weathering with unshaken front a hurricane. When he had done, she moved away from the fireplace, and, beating her side gently with her whip, she stepped to the door.
“Au revoir, Monsieur de Tressan,” said she, mighty cool, her back towards him.
At that he halted in his feverish stride, stood still and threw up his head. His anger went out, as a candle is extinguished by a puff of wind. And in its place a new fear crept into his heart.
“Madame, madame!” he cried. “Wait! Hear me.”
She paused, half-turned, and looked at him over her shoulder, scorn in her glance, a sneer on her scarlet mouth, insolence in every line of her.
“I think, monsieur, that I have heard a little more than enough,” said she. “I am assured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather friend, a poor lipserver.”
“Ah, not that, madame,” he cried, and his voice was stricken. “Say not that. I would serve you as would none other in all this world—you know it, Marquise; you know it.”
She faced about, and confronted him, her smile a trifle broader, as if amusement were now blending with her scorn.
“It is easy to protest. Easy to say, ‘I will die for you,’ so long as the need for such a sacrifice be remote. But let me do no more than ask a favour, and it is, ‘What of my good name, madame? What of my seneschalship? Am I to be gaoled or hanged to pleasure you?’ Faugh!” she ended, with a toss of her splendid head. “The world is peopled with your kind, and I—alas! for a woman’s intuitions—had held you different from the rest.”
Her words were to his soul as a sword of fire might have been to his flesh. They scorched and shrivelled it. He saw himself as she would have him see himself—a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion in his feelings.