“What!” cried Conrad. “Is it possible that, if you really loved the other, you can so soon forget her and desert her? I cannot understand nor imagine how that can be!”
“It is so, nevertheless, whether you understand it or not.” “That is not keeping faith loyally,” said Conrad. “As for me, I would rather die a thousand times, if that were possible, than be so false to my lady. However long God may let me live, I shall never have the will, or even the lightest thought, of ever loving any but her.”
“So much the greater fool you,” said Gerard, “and if you persevere in this folly, you will never be of any good, and will do nothing but dream and muse; and you will dry up like the green herb that is cast into the furnace, and kill yourself, and never have known any pleasure, and even your mistress will laugh at you,—if you are lucky enough to be remembered by her at all.”
“Well!” said Conrad. “You are very experienced in love affairs. I would beg of you to be my intermediary, here or elsewhere, and introduce me to some damsel that I may be cured like you.”
“I will tell you what I will do,” said Gerard. “Tomorrow I will speak to my mistress and tell her that we are comrades, and ask her to speak to one of her lady friends, who will undertake your business, and I do not doubt but that, if you like, you will have a good time, and that the melancholy which now bears you down will disappear—if you care to get rid of it.”
“If it were not for breaking my vow to my mistress, I should desire nothing better,” said Conrad, “but at any rate I will try it.”
With that Gerard turned over and went to sleep, but Katherine was so stricken with grief at seeing and hearing the falsehood of him whom she loved more than all the world, that she wished herself dead and more than dead. Nevertheless, she put aside all feminine feeling, and assumed manly vigour. She even had the strength of mind to talk for a long time the next day with the girl who loved the man she had once adored; and even compelled her heart and eyes to be witnesses of many interviews and love passages that were most galling to her.
Whilst she was talking to Gerard’s mistress, she saw the ring that she had given her unfaithful lover, but she was not so foolish as to admire it, but nevertheless found an opportunity to examine it closely on the girl’s finger, but appeared to pay no heed to it, and soon afterwards left.
As soon as supper was over, she went to her uncle, and said to him;
“We have been long enough in Barrois! It is time to leave. Be ready to-morrow morning at daybreak, and I will be also. And take care that all our baggage is prepared. Come for me as early as you like.”