The lovers were speedily reconciled, but the lady had an important communication to make—no less than the discovery of their intimacy by her husband, whom she felt sure had revealed the fact to her father, M. d’Aubray. A long pause, broken by Sainte-Croix:
“‘Marie,’ he said, ‘they must die, or our happiness is impossible.’”
The Marchioness was not yet hardened enough to receive this announcement with equanimity; and the lovers were still discussing the pros and cons of it, when they were surprised by Monsieur d’Aubray, who, entering by a secret door, “stood looking on the scene before him.” Any doubts of guilty intimacy, if he had any, were dispelled; and, after ordering his daughter to her chamber, he turned to Sainte-Croix, and said:
“‘Monsieur de Sainte-Croix, I will provide you with a lodging where you will run no risk of compromising the honour of a noble family.’”
And so saying, he produced a lettre de cachet, armed with which the exempts, who were waiting for him, speedily deposited M. de Sainte-Croix at the Bastille. The Marchioness, separated from her children and her husband, was exiled to Offremont, a family place some distance from Paris. Here she lived with her father, who so entirely believed in her repentance and determination to lead a new life that he proposed a speedy return to Paris.
“‘I have no wish to go, mon père,’ replied the hypocrite; ‘I would sooner remain here with you—for ever!’”
After much talk and reiterated professions of sorrow for the past, the Marchioness says, in reply to her father’s order that “she shall never speak to Sainte-Croix—who had been released from the Bastille—or recognise him again:
“‘You shall be obeyed, monsieur—too willingly.’”
The words had not long left her lips when she placed a lamp in the window of the room, to guide her lover to a prearranged assignation.
The awful interview that followed is described in Mr. Smith’s book.