Amélie uttered a low, moaning cry. “O my dear infatuated brother, it is not in nature for a De Repentigny to love irrationally like that! What maddening philtre have you drank, to intoxicate you with a woman who uses you so imperiously? But you will not go, Le Gardeur!” added she, clinging to his arm. “You are safe so long as you are with your sister,—you will be safe no longer if you go to the Maison des Meloises tonight!”
“Go I must and shall, Amélie! I have drank the maddening philtre,—I know that, Amélie, and would not take an antidote if I had one! The world has no antidote to cure me. I have no wish to be cured of love for Angélique, and in fine I cannot be, so let me go and receive the rod for coming to Belmont and the reward for leaving it at her summons!” He affected a tone of levity, but Amélie's ear easily detected the false ring of it.
“Dearest brother!” said she, “are you sure Angélique returns, or is capable of returning, love like yours? She is like the rest of us, weak and fickle, merely human, and not at all the divinity a man in his fancy worships when in love with a woman.” It was in vain, however, for Amélie to try to persuade her brother of that.
“What care I, Amélie, so long as Angélique is not weak and fickle to me?” answered he; “but she will think her tardy lover is both weak and fickle unless I put in a speedy appearance at the Maison des Meloises!” He rose up as if to depart, still holding his sister by the hand.
Amélie's tears flowed silently in the darkness. She was not willing to plant a seed of distrust in the bosom of her brother, yet she remembered bitterly and indignantly what Angélique had said of her intentions towards the Intendant. Was she using Le Gardeur as a foil to set off her attractions in the eyes of Bigot?
“Brother!” said Amélie, “I am a woman, and comprehend my sex better than you. I know Angélique's far-reaching ambition and crafty ways. Are you sure, not in outward persuasion but in inward conviction, that she loves you as a woman should love the man she means to marry?”
Le Gardeur felt her words like a silver probe that searched his heart. With all his unbounded devotion, he knew Angélique too well not to feel a pang of distrust sometimes, as she showered her coquetries upon every side of her. It was the overabundance of her love, he said, but he thought it often fell like the dew round Gideon's fleece, refreshing all the earth about it, but leaving the fleece dry. “Amélie!” said he, “you try me hard, and tempt me too, my sister, but it is useless. Angélique may be false as Cressida to other men, she will not be false to me! She has sworn it, with her hand in mine, before the altar of Notre Dame. I would go down to perdition with her in my arms rather than be a crowned king with all the world of women to choose from and not get her.”
Amélie shuddered at his vehemence, but she knew how useless was expostulation. She wisely refrained, deeming it her duty, like a good sister, to make the best of what she could not hinder. Some jasmines overhung the seat; she plucked a handful, and gave them to him as they rose to return to the house.
“Take them with you, Le Gardeur,” said she, giving him the flowers, which she tied into a wreath; “they will remind Angélique that she has a powerful rival in your sister's love.”
He took them as they walked slowly back. “Would she were like you, Amélie, in all things!” said he. “I will put some of your flowers in her hair to-night for your sake, sister.”