“It should,” returned Dunoisse, “if it were possible of credence.”
“Compliments are a currency that does not pass within these doors,” she answered, with a fine slight accent of irony and a tincture of sarcasm in her smile. “Keep yours for Society small-change in the salons of Paris or the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. They are wasted here.”
“I know but little,” said Dunoisse, “of the salons of London and Paris. Circumstances have conspired to shut the doors of Society, generally open to welcome rich men’s sons, as completely in my face as in that of any other ineligible. You will learn why, since you are so kind as to undertake to convey a message from me to the Superintendent of this house. It shall be as brief as I can make it. I would not willingly waste your time.”
She bent her head, and the high-bred grace perceptible in the slight movement appealed to him as exquisite. But he was too earnest in his desire for justification to be turned aside.
“Say to this lady whose charitable hand has lifted my dear old friend—from what depths of penury I only now begin to realize—that if she comprehends that I was a boy at a Military School, and ignorant, thoughtless, and selfish as boys are wont to be, when my good old governess was driven from the house that had been for years her home, and that her dismissal was so brought about that she seemed but to be leaving us upon a visit of condolence to a sick relative, she will judge me less harshly, regard me with less contempt than it may seem to her, now, I deserve!——”
His hearer stopped him:
“You should be told, M. Dunoisse, that all that can be said in your favor has been already said by Miss Smithwick herself. It never occurred to her to reproach you. Nor for her dismissal can you be blamed at all. But it has seemed to me that where there was ability to provide for one so tried and faithful, some effort should have been made in her behalf by you as you grew more mature, and the ample means that are placed at the disposal of a rich man’s son were yours to use. She never told you of her cruel need, I can guess that. But oh! M. Dunoisse! you might have read Hunger and Cold between the lines of the poor thing’s letters.”
There were tears in the great sorrowful blue-gray eyes. Her calm voice shook a little.
“If you had seen her as she was when I was sent to her,” she said, “you would feel as I do. True, a letter with a remittance from you came when she was nearly past needing any of the help it contained for her. But long, long before, you might have read between the lines!”
“Ah!—in the Name of Heaven, Mademoiselle, I pray you hear me!” burst out Dunoisse, catching at the carved knob of the baluster at the stair-head, and wringing it in the energy of his earnestness. “All that you suppose is true! Even before I came of age a large sum of money was placed at my disposal by my father. Over a million of our francs, forty-five thousand of your English sovereigns, lie to my credit in the bank, have so lain for years. May the hour that sees me spend a sou of that accursed money be an hour of shame for me, and bitterness and humiliation! And should ever a day draw near, that is to see me trick myself in dignities and honors stolen by a charlatan’s device, and usurp a power to which I have no more moral right than the meanest peasant of the State it rules—before its dawning I pray that I may die! and that those who come seeking a clod of mud to throw in the face of a Catholic principality, may find it lying in a coffin!”