"See you well, Monsieur, a young lady cannot bestow a gift of that kind. It is for the gentleman, having obtained consent, to take..."
Breagh caught her to his broad breast and snatched the coveted guerdon. He cried to her in wonder and triumph:
"You love me!... A fellow like me?... And you will be my wife? We are not going to England to be parted! I am not a beggar any more! I will try again for my practicing degree in Medicine, and get it! I will write books and make a name for myself in Literature. But not unless you'll marry me!... Oh, Juliette! say when you will marry me?"
She said, with downcast eyelids that veiled laughter, though the rose flush had dyed her very temples, and the beating of her heart shook her slight frame:
"Monsieur, my grandmother would have answered: 'Under the circumstances, the marriage cannot take place too soon.... Once a young girl has been kissed, she must be married.' And"—the smile peeped out—"I was taught always to obey my grandmother...."
"Admirably spoken!" said the Chancellor.
He had come upon the lovers, of set purpose it may have been. Now he stood surveying them in an ogreish, yet not unamiable fashion, as they stood before him hand in hand.
He said, and the resonant tones were veiled by a painful hoarseness, of which the reason was known to Mademoiselle alone:
"Mr. Breagh, Count Hatzfeldt has the necessary papers of which I spoke to you. You will find him in the drawing-room waiting to complete some slight formalities inseparable from the granting of passports in time of War.... Good-bye to you, good luck and all happiness. I am on the point of departure for the Prefecture, so I shall not again see you. For a moment I detain Mademoiselle."
As Breagh bowed to Juliette and His Excellency and hastened toward the house, the Chancellor said to Juliette: