‘Then you can tell it to me,’ he retorted suspiciously. ‘Mademoiselle, I will answer for it, has no desire to—’
‘See me or speak to me? No,’ I said. ‘I can understand that. Yet I want to speak to her.’
‘Very well, you can speak in my presence,’ he answered rudely. ‘If that be all, let us ride on and join her.’ And he made a movement as if to do so.
‘That will not do, M. de Cocheforet,’ I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. ‘Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life.’
He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker.
‘Fine words,’ he said, with a sneer. ‘Yet I fancy I understand them.’ And then with a passionate oath he broke out. ‘But I will not have it! I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I will not have it. I will have no such Judas bargain made. PARDIEU! do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, restraining myself with difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
‘But I know what you mean,’ he replied, in a tone of suppressed rage. ‘You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to save me. And you would have me stand by and see the thing done. No, sir, never; never, though I go to the wheel. I will die a gentleman, if I have lived a fool.’
‘I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other,’ I retorted in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
‘Oh, I am not quite a fool!’ he cried, scowling at me. ‘I have used my eyes.’