Le Prun glanced at the letter, a few lines of which the dead man had traced when he was thus awfully interrupted. "Sir," it began, "the family of Charrebourg, of which I am the unworthy representative, have been remarkable at all times for a chivalric and honorable spirit. They have maintained their dignity in prosperity by great deeds and princely munificence—in adversity, by encountering grief with patience, and insolence with defiance. Insult has never approached them unexpiated by blood; and I, old as I am, in consequence of what this morning——" here the summons had interrupted him.
"Intended for me!" said Le Prun, with an ugly sneer. "Well, he can't now put his daughter on her guard, or inflame her with the magnificent spirit of the beggarly Charrebourgs."
And so saying, he surrendered the chamber to the dead Visconte and his canine watcher.
XII.—ISOLATION.
Blassemare kept his counsel and his word. He dropped no hint to Le Prun of his interview with the Marquis de Secqville. His own vanity was at once mortified and excited by the discovery he had made. He was resolved to obliterate the disgrace of having been duped, by the reality of his meditated triumph. Love and war have much in common, a truth perhaps embodied in the allegoric loves of Mars and Venus. Certain, at least, it is, that in each pursuit all authorities agree that every stratagem is fair. Blassemare was not the man to rob this canon of its force by any morbid scruples of conscience; and having the courage of a lion, associated with some of the vulpine attributes, and a certain prankish love of mischief, he was tolerably qualified by nature for the enterprises of rivalry and intrigue.
Le Prun brooded savagely over his suspected wrongs. He awaited with affected contempt, but a real and malignant anxiety, the verdict of Blassemare, who insisted upon deferring his interview with Madame Le Prun until some weeks had passed over the grave of that "high and puissant signer, the Visconte de Charrebourg."
It was nearly a month after the death of that old gentleman, when Blassemare, happening to meet Madame Le Prun as she walked upon one of the terraces, dressed in so exquisite a suit of mourning, and looking altogether so irresistibly handsome, that, for the life of him, he could not forbear saluting, approaching, and addressing her. He was affably received, and the conversation, at first slight and indifferent, turned gradually, without premeditation on his part, but, as it were, by a sort of irresistible fatality, into that sombre and troubled channel whither, sooner or later, though not exactly then, he had determined to direct it.
"Monsieur Le Prun is unaccountably out of spirits, madame—I should say morose, ill-tempered. I almost fear to approach him."
"Is there any thing to surprise one in that?"
"Why, no, considering his provocations."