“It was written twelve months ago,” he said, somewhat lamely.
“And the duel which it caused is twelve months ago, too, I suppose? The right arm of her husband the Comte des Forges is healed, but the wound—my God! the wound in his heart and mine, that you can never heal. And she is not alone. Does not Paris ring with the gallantries of the Vicomte de Nérac? For aught I know there may be a dozen husbands in England who have lost their sword arm because André de Nérac professed to love their wives.” She checked herself and was calm again. “I thank you for the honour you have done me, but—” she offered him the stateliest, coldest curtsey, “Vicomte, I am your servant.”
She would have escaped by the door behind her, but André intercepted her. “No,” he said, “you do not leave me yet. I, too, have something to say and you, Marquise, will be pleased to hear it.”
Their eyes met and then Denise walked back to her place by the fireplace. She was trembling now, and she no longer looked him in the face.
“Is that letter to the Comtesse des Forges, one of my friends—my friends, Mon Dieu!—yours, or is it not?”
“As to the past,” he said in a low voice, “I say nothing, for I deserve your reproaches. I have been foolish, wicked, unworthy of you. But there is no noble to-day at Versailles of whom the same could not be said. Men are men, and I have never concealed from you what I have been. But such things do not destroy love. They cannot and they never will, and every woman knows it. My past, I assert, is not your reason.”
“What then is?” she asked proudly.
“I am poor, you are rich, but that is not the reason, either. Do not think I would dishonour you by supposing that I believed that, though some whom you call your friends say it is. No, the reason is that while I have been away, a prisoner, defenceless, silent, some one—” he paused, “some one has been poisoning your mind, some one who hopes to take the place——”
“Take care——” she interrupted.