The marquis gave a cry. The unexpected answer had roused the slowly-gnawing death and made it bite deeper.
"What have you to do," he almost screamed, "with my affairs? It was for me to introduce what I chose of them. You presume."
"Pardon me, my lord: you led me to what I was bound to say. Shall I leave you, my lord?"
The marquis made no answer. "God knows I loved her," he said after a while with a sigh.
"You loved her, my lord?"
"I did, by God!"
"Love a woman like that and come to this?"
"Come to this? We must all come to this, I fancy, sooner or later. Come to what, in the name of Beelzebub?"
"That, having loved a woman like her, you are content to lose her. In the name of God, have you no desire to see her again?"
"It would be an awkward meeting," said the marquis.