"No, Maurice," returned Madeleine, growing ghastly pale, and speaking with an effort which gave her voice a hollow, unnatural sound. "He whom I love has never aided me,--I have received no assistance from him,--I have given him no right to offer any."
"He whom you love!" repeated Maurice with culminating anguish. "Then you love him,--you _do_ love him still? Answer me, Madeleine. Do not torture me by suspense! Answer me,--you love him still?"
"_As ever!_" replied Madeleine, and an irrepressible blush chased the ashy whiteness of her cheeks.
"And he is _here_,--here in America,--here in Washington?" asked Maurice.
"And you see him? You have seen him perhaps this very day?"
"And he loves you,--loves you as much as ever?"
Madeleine silently bowed her head, but the radiant light that overspread her countenance answered more unmistakably than the affirmative action.
"Ah, Madeleine, can you think, can you believe that his love equals mine? You do not answer; speak, I implore you! _Do_ you believe that _he_ has loved you as _I_ love you?"
Madeleine felt impelled to reply because she deemed it best for Maurice to be confirmed in his error. In a low, tremulous tone, and with her eyes swimming in the soft lustre of a half-formed tear, she murmured, "Yes."
"No! no! It cannot be!" burst forth Maurice. "No woman was ever loved _twice_ with such absorbing devotion. You cannot be to him what you are to me! You cannot have saved him from all the perils from which you have saved me! Ah, Madeleine, since you have been selected to fill the place of a guardian angel to me, why, why was my love rejected? Why did another rob me of your heart? Why were you willing to unite your fate to his and not to mine?"
"Maurice," said Madeleine, regaining some degree of composure, "I shall never forget the noble offer you made me when I was a desolate outcast; I shall never forget the joy it gave me,--the gratitude it caused me,--the good it did me, at the very moment when I was forced, _ay forced_ to reject that offer. But had there been no other barrier could I have consented to become a burden to you? I,--poor and friendless,--_could_ I have consented to draw down the anger of your family upon you? _Could_ I have consented to separate you from them?--to make a lasting feud between you? Say, Maurice, would you have had me do this?"