“And if I were to lay that proof before you?” she inquired, sadly almost.
Valerie’s eyes opened a trifle wider, as if in apprehension. But her answer was prompt and her voice steady. “It still could have no effect upon my attitude towards your son.”
“This is foolishness, Valerie—”
“In you it is, madame,” the girl broke in; “a foolishness to think you can constrain a girl, compel her affections, command her love, by such means as you have employed towards me. You think that it predisposes me to be wooed, that it opens my heart to your son, to see myself gaoled that he may pay me his court.”
“Gaoled, child? Who gaols you?” the Dowager cried, as if the most surprising utterance had fallen from Valerie’s lips.
Mademoiselle smiled in sorrow and some scorn.
“Am I not gaoled, then?” she asked. “What call you this? What does that fellow there? He is to lie outside my door at nights to see that none holds communication with me. He is to go with me each morning to the garden, when, by your gracious charity I take the air. Sleeping and waking the man is ever within hearing of any word that I may utter—”
“But he has no French!” the Dowager protested.
“To ensure, no doubt, against any attempt of mine to win him to my side, to induce him to aid me escape from this prison. Oh, madame, I tell you you do but waste time, and you punish me and harass yourself to little purpose. Had Marius been such a man as I might have felt it in my nature to love—which Heaven forbid!—these means by which you have sought to bring that thing about could but have resulted in making me hate him as I do.”
The Dowager’s fears were banished from her mind at that, and with them went all thought of conciliating Valerie. Anger gleamed in her eyes; the set of her lips grew suddenly sneering and cruel, so that the beauty of her face but served to render it hateful the more.