‘Nay, sir,’ she cried impetuously, ‘there is no need of telling. If you have what I say, show it me! It is you who lose time. Let us have no more words!’
I had used very few words, and, God knows, was not in the mind to use many; but, being in the wrong, I had no answer to make except the truth, and that humbly. ‘I had such a token as you mention, mademoiselle,’ I said, ‘no farther back than this afternoon, in the shape of half a gold coin, entrusted to me by my friend. But, to my shame I say it, it was stolen from me a few hours back.’
‘Stolen from you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes, mademoiselle; and for that reason I cannot show it,’ I answered.
‘You cannot show it? And you dare to come to me without it!’ she cried, speaking with a vehemence which fairly startled me, prepared as I was for reproaches. You come to me! You!’ she continued. And with that, scarcely stopping to take breath, she loaded me with abuse; calling me impertinent, a meddler, and a hundred other things, which I now blush to recall, and displaying in all a passion which even in her attendant would have surprised me, but in one so slight and seemingly delicate, overwhelmed and confounded me. In fault as I was, I could not understand the peculiar bitterness she displayed, or the contemptuous force of her language, and I stared at her in silent wonder until, of her own accord, she supplied the key to her feelings. In a fresh outburst of rage she snatched off her mask, and to my astonishment I saw before me the young maid of honour whom I had encountered in the King of Navarre’s antechamber, and whom I had been so unfortunate as to expose to the raillery of Mathurine.
‘Who has paid you, sir,’ she continued, clenching her small hands and speaking with tears of anger in her eyes, ‘to make me the laughing-stock of the Court? It was bad enough when I thought you the proper agent of those to whom I have a right to look for aid! It was bad enough when I thought myself forced, through their inconsiderate choice, to decide between an odious imprisonment and the ridicule to which your intervention must expose me! But that you should have dared, of your own notion, to follow me, you, the butt of the Court—’
‘Mademoiselle!’ I cried.
‘A needy, out-at-elbows adventurer!’ she persisted, triumphing in her cruelty. ‘It exceeds all bearing! It is not to be suffered! It—’
‘Nay, mademoiselle; you SHALL hear me!’ I cried, with a sternness which at last stopped her. ‘Granted I am poor, I am still a gentleman; yes, mademoiselle,’ I continued, firmly, ‘a gentleman, and the last of a family which has spoken with yours on equal terms. And I claim to be heard. I swear that when I came here to-night I believed you to be a perfect stranger! I was unaware that I had ever seen you, unaware that I had ever met you before.’
‘Then why did you come?’ she said viciously.