The prisoner Dubois frowned.
“If Mdme. Dubois had ears through these walls, you had not called me 'Pierre.' But—” laying his hand on his heart and bowing low, “Pierre himself is flattered—oui, mademoiselle—by your attention—oui, vraiment—and he is rejoiced to know that his image is still cherished in that heart so fair, so Anglaise, so pure, so good. Belle-enfant, Je n'ai pas oublié nos amours!”
The three men in the room suppressed a smile. Dubois stood with his head thrown back, his arms folded and his soft dark eyes fixed on Cecilia. She was still standing, indeed there was no chair in the room, and her eyes were fixed on him as his upon herself. It was Pierre, and yet not her Pierre. Rather an exaggerated growth—of the man she had once known. The same soft brown hair, only thicker and rougher, one drooping wave looking tangled and unkempt—the dreamy eyes with the latent sneer in them dreamier than ever and yet the sneer more visible, the thin sensitive nose thinner, the satisfied mouth more satisfied and conscious, the weak chin fatally weaker. And he was married, too! Mdme. Dubois—that must be his wife! How strange it was! Cecilia's brain was in a frightful state of doubt and fever and hesitation. It was necessary for her to explain her presence there, however, for she could not but resent the opening speech of the prisoner Dubois. She was growing very tired of standing, moreover, but she would have died rather than have demanded a chair. At length the turnkey observed her fatigue and sent one of the warders for a chair.
“Fetch two,” interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. “I myself shall sit down.” When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning, offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it, waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as if fillets of fire had been exchanged for ribbons of snow.
“Sir,” she began, “I am sorry to find you here.” Dubois smiled the smile of a great man who listens with condescension to what an inferior has to say. “I am glad you have not forgotten me, because all the time I was away, and it has been a long time, I never—it is quite true—forgot you—I mean (for Dubois smiled again) I never forgot that summer you spent near us at Port Joli, and the things you talked about, about your future. When I came home I found you had gone so much further than I know you ever intended to, and have been the cause of so much trouble, and the death of brave men, and I was very sorry.” Cecilia leant on the bare table before her, and felt that every moment as it passed brought with it a cooling of the once passionate feeling she had entertained for the Dubois of her childhood. But if the lover were gone, there remained the man, husband and father, maybe the leader, the orator, the martyr, the dear human being.
“So I thought that if it were possible at all, some step should be taken to—to prevent the law from taking its course—its final course perhaps.” Cecilia felt her throat tighten as she spoke. “You have plenty of friends—you must have—all the French will help and many, many English, for it is no cause to die for, it is no cause at all! There should never have been bloodshed on either side!”
Dubois uncrossed his long legs at last and said in his loftiest tone:
“Chère enfant, the French will not let me die. I—I myself—Pierre Dubois—allowed to hang by the neck until I am dead! That will never happen. Voyez-vous donc chérie, I am their King, their prophet, their anointed, their fat priests acknowledge me, their women adore me!”
Cecilia shrunk together as she listened. She had sought and she had not found, she had expected and it had been denied her. At this moment, the turnkey signified that time was up. She felt her heart burning in an agony of undefined grief and disappointment in which was also mingled the relief of resignation. The prisoner Dubois bowed low with his hand on his heart and then pressing her own hand lingeringly, gave her a tenderly insinuating glance. As she turned away she heard him exchange a laugh and a jest with one of the wardens, and her cheeks flamed with indignant anger. “Were he a good or suffering man as I dreamed he was, I would have bent low and kissed his hand; as it was, I am sorry I let him take mine.”
She was calm when she reached her carriage in which sat her father waiting. He divined at once that his plan had been successful. “You look tired, my dear,” was all he said.