Part 65 (1/2)
”May not this interview at least be sacred from the presence of your keepers?”
”Poor dear soul, she is happily oblivious, and will take no stenographic notes. I would as soon declare war against my own shadow as order her away.”
Evidently chagrined, the visitor stood irresolute, and meanwhile the gaze of his companion wandered back to the beauty of the Bay.
He drew a chair close to that which she occupied, and holding his hat as a screen, should Mrs. Waul's spectacles chance to turn in that direction, spoke earnestly.
”Have I been unpardonably presumptuous in interpreting favourably this permission to see you once more? Have you done me the honour to ponder the contents of my letter?”
”I certainly have pondered well the contents.”
She kept her hands beyond his reach, and looking steadily into his eager handsome face, she saw it flush deeply.
”Madame, I trust, I believe you are incapable of trifling.”
”In which, you do me bare justice only. With me the time for trifling is past; and just now life has put on all its tragic vestments. But how long since General Laurance believed me incapable of--worse than trifling?”
”Ever since my infamous folly was reproved by you as it deserved.
Ever since you taught me that you were even more n.o.ble in soul than lovely in person. Be generous, and do not humiliate me by recalling that temporary insanity. Having blundered fearfully, in my ignorance of your real character, does not the offer of yesterday embody all the reparation, all the atonement of which a man is capable?”
”You desire me to consider the proposal contained in your letter, as an expiation for past offences, as an _amende honourable_ for what might have ripened into insult, had it not been nipped in the bud? Do I translate correctly your gracious diction?”
”No, you cruelly torment me by referring to an audacious and shameful offence, for which I blush.”
”Successful sins are unenc.u.mbered by penitential oblations, and only discovered and defeated crimes arouse conscience, and paint one's cheeks with mortification. General Laurance merely ill.u.s.trates a great social law.”
”Do not, dear madame, keep me in this fiery suspense. I have offered you all that a gentleman can lay at the feet of the woman he loves.”
A cold smile lighted her face, as some arctic moonbeams gleams for an instant across the spires and doomes of an iceberg.
”Once you attempted to offer me your heart, or what remains of its ossified ruins; which I declined. Now you tender me your hand and name, and indeed it appears that like many of the high-born cla.s.s you so n.o.bly represent, your heart and hand have never hitherto been conjoined in your _devoir_. It were a melancholy pity they should be eternally divorced.”
Bending over her, he exclaimed:
”As heaven hears me, I swear I love you better than life, than everything else that the broad earth holds! You cannot possibly doubt my sincerity, for you hold the proof in your own hands. Be merciful, Odille, and end my anxiety.”
He caught her hand, and as she attempted no resistance, he raised it to his moustached lip. Her eyes were resting upon the blue expanse of water, as if far away, across the vast vista of the Mediterranean she sought some strengthening influence, some sacred inspiration; and after a moment, turning them full upon his countenance, she said with grave stony composure:
”You have asked me to become your wife, knowing full well that no affection would prompt me to entertain the thought; and you must be thoroughly convinced that only sordid motives of policy could influence me to accept you. Do men who marry under such circ.u.mstances honour and trust the women, who as a _dernier ressort_ bear their names? You are not so weak, so egregiously vain, as to delude yourself for one instant with the supposition that I could ever love you?”
”Once my wife, I ask nothing more. Upon my own head and life, be the failure to make you love me. Only give me this hand, and I will take your heart Can a lover ask less, and hazard more?”
”And if you fail--woefully, as fail you must?”
”I shall not. You cannot awe or discourage me, for I have yet to find the heart that successfully defies my wors.h.i.+p. But if you remained indifferent--ah, loveliest! you would not! Even then, I should be blessed by your presence, your society--and that alone were worth all other women!”
”Even though it cost you the heavy, galling burden of marriage vows, an exorbitant price, which only necessity extorts? How vividly we of the nineteenth century exemplify the wisdom of the cla.s.sic aphorisms?
_Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat_. Have you no fear that you are seizing with bare fingers a glittering thirsty blade, which may flesh itself in the hand that dares to caress it?”
”I fear nothing but your rejection; and though you should prove Judith or Jael, I would disarm you thus.”