Part 42 (1/2)
”Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known.”
”Perhaps!” said Marianne.
Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might speak of his pa.s.sion or of his reminiscences.
She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his mistress.
”No!” he said, with a smile, ”it is only a Frenchman who would despise the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a fall.”
Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression.
”What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?”
”I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!”
She felt her color change.
Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said?
Jose added in a very gentle tone:
”Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?”
”You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions.”
”What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day?
Was he there to see you?”
Marianne smiled.
”Why, the minister simply came to talk of business matters. I hardly see him except for Uncle Kayser, who is soliciting an official commission,--you heard him--”
”Does Monsieur Vaudrey pay his addresses to you?”
”Necessarily. Oh! but only out of pure French gallantry. Mere politeness. He loves his wife and he knows very well that I don't love any one.”
”No one?” asked Rosas.
”I do not love any one yet,” repeated Marianne, opening her gray eyes with a wide stare under the Spaniard's anxious glance.
From that day, her mind was possessed of a new idea that imperiously directed it. When Rosas had returned to her, she had only regarded him as a possible lover, rich and agreeable. The mistress of a minister, she would become the mistress of a duke. A millionaire duke. The change would be profitable, a.s.suming that she could not retain both. Her calculations were speedily made. She would only make Rosas pay more dearly for the resistance he had offered before surrendering himself.
But now, abruptly and without her having thought of it, he had, with the incautiousness of a soldier who discloses his attack and lays himself open to a bully who tries to provoke him, the duke showed her the extent of his violent pa.s.sion by a single phrase that feverishly agitated her.
His mistress! Why his mistress, since he had shown her that perhaps?--
”Idiot that I am!” thought Marianne. ”Suppose I play my cards for marriage?”
She shrugged her shoulders.