“Why?” groaned the Duke.
“I was afraid that you would kill him.”
“Afraid? What is he to you?”
It was a dreadful situation for a young girl. She had never told me in so many words, although I was sure of it in my own mind, and to have to declare it before all these men was indeed hard. Yet with a heroism for which I can never be sufficiently grateful she said it.
“I love him!”
“You love him!” exclaimed her grandfather in amazement.
“Monsieur le Duc de Rivau-Huet,” I cried in my turn, springing to her side, lifting her up, and slipping my arm about her waist, “I have the honor to ask you to give me the hand of your granddaughter in marriage.”
“She is a countess of France,” replied the Duke. “The best blood in the land flows in her veins, Monsieur.”
“I have some indifferent good in my own veins, Monsieur le Duc,” I asserted, naming some of my mother’s people.
“Is this true, Monsieur?”