“I refuse to obey you,” he answered, firmly. “Already you know that because I loved you so well I have borne without regret my father’s action in leaving me almost penniless. Since that day I have worked and striven with you always as my pole-star because you had promised to be mine. Your photograph looked down at me always from the mantelshelf of my dull, smoke-begrimed room. It smiled when I smiled, and was melancholy when I was sad. And the roses and violets you have sent from here made my room look so gay, and their perfume was so fresh that they seemed to breathe the same sweet odour that your chiffons always exhale. Your letters were a little cold, it is true; but I attributed that to the fact that in Nice the distractions are so many that correspondence is always sadly neglected. Picture to yourself what a blow it was to me when, on the terrace at Monte Carlo, you told me that you had another lover, and that you intended to marry him. I felt—”
“Ah!” she cried, putting up her little hand to arrest the flow of his words, “I know, I know. But I cannot help it. I love you still—I shall love you always. But our marriage is not to be.”
He paused in deep reflection. There was one matter upon which he had never spoken to her, and he was wondering whether he should mention it, or let it remain a secret within him. In a few moments, however, he decided.
“I have already told you the cause which led my father to treat me so unjustly, Liane,” he said, looking at her seriously, “but there is one other fact of which I have never spoken. My father left me a considerable sum of money on condition that I married a woman whom I had never seen.”
“A woman you had never seen!” she exclaimed, at first surprised, then laughing at the absurdity of such an idea.
“Yes. It was his revenge. I would not promise to renounce all thought of you, therefore, in addition to leaving me practically a pauper, he made a tantalising provision that if I chose to marry this mysterious woman, of whom none of my family knew anything, I was to receive a certain sum. This woman must, according to the will, be offered a large sum as bribe to accept me as husband, therefore ever since my father’s death his solicitors have been endeavouring to discover her.”
“How extraordinary!” she said, deeply interested in his statement. “Has the woman been found?”
“Yes. I discovered her yesterday,” he replied. “You discovered her! Then she is here, in Nice?”
“Yes, strangely enough, she is here.”
“What’s her name?”