“You are jesting with me, Victor; I do not understand your parable.”
“It must be that I shall speak more plainly. My story must have its moral.”
He still held Orme´s glove upon his knee and was unconsciously plucking to pieces the lace with which it was embroidered. But neither of them noticed it. Dorothy was waiting breathlessly for what was to come, and determined on her part to refuse the generous offer De Laprade was about to make.
“It shames me to think I was an unwilling listener but now, and I heard, not all, but enough. The window was open and I heard before I could withdraw. But I had known it all before and was only waiting.”
“You shall not wait,” Dorothy cried impetuously. “I am true and loyal.”
“I never doubted you, but I am not. I am inconstant as the wind, and change my mind a hundred times a day. Fortune, not love, is my goddess, the fickle and the strange. I am out of humour already and long for change. Your city chokes me, a bird of prey mewed up among the sparrows. You must cut the silken thread and give me my freedom, ma belle.”
“I shall never,” Dorothy said, disregarding the words and thinking only of the spirit that prompted them, “I shall never forgive the weakness I have shown. Indeed you have my regard and my esteem, and some time I hope you will have my love. I shall keep my faith, truly and loyally. I shall not change.”
“Then I must help myself when you will not. You are cruel, my cousin, and force me to speak. I, Victor De Laprade, a poor gentleman, having found that in all honour I cannot marry Dorothy Carew, here declare that I am a pitiful fellow and leave her to go my own way, hoping that she will trouble me no further with her importunity. Now, that being done, let us be friends, which we should never have been had you married me.”
“This is like you, Victor,” she said sadly; “I am a pitiful creature when I measure myself with you.”
“You are a woman, my dear; I have served them long and bought my knowledge dearly. But you are better than most of them,” he added with a smile, “for some that I have known would have held me despite all that I have said. I was not made for your Shakespeare´s Benedict, I think it was.”