Denise gazed at her in silent helplessness. Fate was too strong for them all. The clock chimed out five strokes into the awful quiet of the room, and as Denise, in her restless misery, walked past the fireplace with its sculptured marble chimney-piece, she halted with a sharp-drawn breath. The crest on the clock had caught her eye, for the motto on it was “Dieu Le Vengeur!”
“Before we part,” she cried, “you will tell me, you must, who you are—no,” she added, in a stricken voice, “it is not necessary. I know, I know. Ah, God! this is terrible. ‘Dieu Le Vengeur!’” She covered her face with her hands.
A quiet hand was laid on her shoulder. “Denise.”
For some moments they looked at each other in breathless silence.
“It is true; yes it is true, and you—you have guessed because you are a woman who loves. Ah! when your ancestors were as nothing mine were the nobles who made kings, who were leading the armies of France. I am a traitress, but to what?” her voice rang out. “To the man called Louis the Fifteenth, a craven, a bigot, a liar, a libertine, the victim of the priests and his lusts. That man is not France, not your France and mine. Listen. What would you have done if the King—the King,” her scorn was immeasurable, “had stolen your mother, deserted her, sent your father to the scaffold for treason that he never committed? if you, the only daughter, had been saved from infamy and beggary by two faithful servants and brought up in secret to know that your name was corrupted, your brother a starveling in exile, your lands given to another? To that King I bear no allegiance and will bear none, so help me God, God who can avenge.”
“Then——”
“Do not say that name. It is blotted out, but it is mine. Fifteen years ago, a child, I swore, and every year since I have sworn it on the grave that is called mine, that I would have revenge.”
Denise answered with pale lips, “Yes, revenge.”
“My brother and I planned and plotted revenge and we succeeded. The Court and the King can judge of that. Beauty was mine and I nourished it for revenge, I used it for revenge, but I have never forgotten, never, that I am a daughter of the noblesse, a woman as proud of my womanhood as you, Denise.”
“Thank God,” she murmured gently.