Those words and the tone wherein they were uttered set my brain on fire. I turned towards her; our glances met, and her eyes—those eyes that but a while ago had never looked on me without avowing the disdain wherein she had held me—were now filled with a light of kindliness, of sympathy, of tenderness that seemed more than I could endure.
Already my hand was thrust into the bosom of my doublet, and my fingers were about to drag forth that little shred of green velvet that I had found in the coppice on the day of her abduction, and that I had kept ever since as one keeps the relic of a departed saint. Another moment and I should have poured out the story of the mad, hopeless passion that filled my heart to bursting, when of a sudden—“Yvonne, Yvonne!” came Geneviève's fresh voice from the other end of the terrace. The spell of that moment was broken.
Methought Mademoiselle made a little gesture of impatience as she answered her sister's call; then, with a word of apology, she left me.
Half dazed by the emotions that had made sport of me, I leaned over the balustrade, and with my elbows on the stone and my chin on my palms, I stared stupidly before me, thanking God for having sent Geneviève in time to save me from again earning Mademoiselle's scorn. For as I grew sober I did not doubt that with scorn she would have met the wild words that already trembled on my lips.
I laughed harshly and aloud, such a laugh as those in Hell may vent. “Gaston, Gaston!” I muttered, “at thirty-two you are more a fool than ever you were at twenty.”
I told myself then that my fancy had vested her tone and look with a kindliness far beyond that which they contained, and as I thought of how I had deemed impatient the little gesture wherewith she had greeted Geneviève's interruption I laughed again.
From the reverie into which, naturally enough, I lapsed, it was Mademoiselle who aroused me. She stood beside me with an unrest of manner so unusual in her, that straightway I guessed the substance of her talk with Geneviève.
“So, Mademoiselle,” I said, without waiting for her to speak, “you have learned what is afoot?”
“I have,” she answered. “That they love each other is no news to me. That they intend to wed does not surprise me. But that they should contemplate a secret marriage passes my comprehension.”
I cleared my throat as men will when about to embark upon a perilous subject with no starting-point determined.