“Not selfish!” he cried. “Think you that he is enriching and contracting great alliances for us because he loves us? No, no. Our uncle seeks to gain our support and with it the support of those noble houses to which he is allying us. The nobility opposes him, therefore he seeks to find relatives among noblemen, so that he may weather the storm of which his far-seeing eyes have already detected the first dim clouds. What to him are my feelings, my inclinations, my affections? Things of no moment, to be sacrificed so that I may serve him in the manner that will bring him the most profit. Yet you call him not selfish! Were he not selfish, I should go to him and say: 'I love Geneviève de Canaples. Create me Duke as you would do, did I wed her sister, and the Chevalier de Canaples will not withstand our union.' What think you would be his answer?”
“I have a shrewd idea what his answer would be,” I replied slowly. “Also I have a shrewd idea of what he will say when he learns in what manner you have defied his wishes.”
“He can but order me away from Court, or, at most, banish me from France.”
“And then what will become of you—of you and your wife?”
“What is to become of us?” he cried in a tone that was almost that of anger. “Think you that I am a pauper dependent upon my uncle's bounty? I have an estate near Palermo, which, for all that it does not yield riches, is yet sufficient to enable us to live with dignity and comfort. I have told Geneviève, and she is content.”
I looked at his flushed face and laughed.
“Well, well!” said I. “If you are resolved upon it, it is ended.”
He appeared to meditate for a moment, then—“We have decided to be married by the Curé of St. Innocent on the day after to-morrow.”
“Crédieu!” I answered, with a whistle, “you have wasted no time in determining your plans. Does Yvonne know of it?”
“We have dared tell nobody,” he replied; and a moment later he added hesitatingly, “You, I know, will not betray us.”