Part 29 (2/2)
He had not proceeded far when the Marechale sent for Cyrene. It was the kind of opportunity in which de Lotbiniere gloried. As soon as he commenced she scanned him with intense attention, saying to herself, ”This is one of Germain's enemies.” As he told his tale he too watched her closely. The courage with which she listened to the development of a story so deeply affecting her honour and her heart, and her perfect dignity, unexpected by him, baffled him, from point to point of his careful narration, where he had expected to produce effects.
”Of all women,” he thought, ”she is the strangest. Are my skill and effort to be wasted on a girl?” But guessing correctly all at once and rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of himself, he stopped and said--
”He has doubtless told Madame a very different version.”
”He has told me nothing of these things, sir,” she answered quietly.
De Lotbiniere was nonplussed, but he had not yet come to the duels. He now mentioned them.
”There have been two duels.”
”_Mon dieu!_”
”I hope that your nephew punished him sharply,” La Marechale interrupted.
”The brute, unfortunately, has wounded my nephew, Madame.”
”Is your brother-in-law, the Marquis de Repentigny, whom you mentioned, he who killed a man named Philibert in Quebec?” now demanded Cyrene.
It was as if a thunderbolt struck de Lotbiniere.
”Who spoke to you of that?” he exclaimed hastily.
”Do you hear?” Cyrene cried excitedly, turning to La Marechale. ”Do you hear this admission of murder?”
”It was no murder!” de Lotbiniere interrupted, trembling with feeling.
”You apparently wish some finer term to describe it,” she retorted.
”Sir, any charges made to me against my affianced must be supported by individuals more free of terrible records. _I_ shall trust his innocence through eternity.” And with these words, uttered frigidly, she left the room, the Marechale looking after her astonished.
Now Germain, having fled from Troyes, came to the hotel. He entered one of the great salons, and, miserable and desperate, sent up his name to Cyrene for a last interview. While he waited to be ushered up, to his surprise, she herself appeared at the end of the salon, advancing with a tearful expression. The sight of her, dragged down into his pit of misery, sent him distracted. All was forgotten for a few moments, as she tearfully clasped him in her arms and murmured--
”Germain, you are no adventurer, no Sillon. Though all the world be against you, I shall die with you.”
Intoxicated with surprise that she did not repel him, yet overcome with the belief that it was to be their last embrace, he lost himself for the time in mingled remorse and mad bliss. They clung to each other as so many others have clung in those short moments which are the attar of a lifetime. At length he grew more conscious, and the delirium of holding that face and golden hair to his breast triumphed over the pain of guilt. At that moment they simultaneously perceived a shadow and started.
”Baroness,” said a severe voice, ”you make me blush for my house.”
Cyrene and Germain sprang apart in alarm.
”_You_,” Madame l'Etiquette said, addressing Germain, ”have dared to enact such a scene here. You, the apothecary's apprentice----”
”Madame,” Cyrene cried, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, ”withdraw those words! I demand it!”
The situation aroused all his faculties.
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