The third picture was the deliverance of Andromeda. When Esperance appeared, so slender, so fragile, her long hair waving in floods of pale gold almost to the floor, a murmur of almost sacred admiration rang through the hall. Lady Rupper approached her, and taking the child's hair in her hands, cried out, "Oh! my dear, it is more beautiful than the American gold."
The Duke came up to Esperance.
"I should have preferred enchaining you to delivering you,
Mademoiselle."
"I can speak now in the person of Andromeda and thank you for that deliverance … which you promised," she answered with a little smile.
She had spoken so low that only the Duke could hear the ending which he alone understood. He had promised to deliver her from his love, but at that instant he revolted against the thought and the admonition.
"Why not?" he muttered to himself. "She must be happier with me than with that insufferable bore! I will keep my word until she herself absolves me from it."
They had to arrange her pose against the rock. Maurice and Albert helped her, while the Duke watched from a distance, and criticized the effect. All at once he cried out, "That is perfect. Don't move. Now the mechanician must mark the place to set the fetters for the hands and feet."
Maurice stepped back by the Duke to judge of the effect.
"It is excellent," he said, looking only, thinking only as an artist. "That child has a beauty of proportion, a dazzling grace, and the most lovely face imaginable."
As the Duke did not speak, Maurice looked at him. He was standing upright, leaning against a table, pale as death.