“How ridiculous!” cried the Marquis, laughing. “What difference can it make to you now that you are to become the Marquise Egmont de St. Angel?”
Diane made no reply; she could not make any one understand, who had not lived in the ideal world, what it meant to disgrace one’s self in public by breaking down. Madame Grandin said, however:
“That is true. But how can a marquis understand common people like you and me, Diane?”
Everything was ready; the white muslin, nicely washed and ironed, was in Diane’s chest of drawers. The wedding veil and wreath of orange blossoms, which had cost all of ten francs, lay on top of the wedding gown, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. That wedding veil was floating before Diane’s eyes just as a poor mortal, leaving this world which he loves and all the people in it, sees the silvery cloud that masks the gates of pearl leading to Paradise. All the time, whether on the stage or off, she was saying to herself:
“It is the last time, the last, the last, the last.”
The Grandins drove a knife into Diane’s heart by adding:
“But we expect to do just as well with Mademoiselle Rose.”
“Think of it, Diane, after to-night we shall never act together any more! To-morrow you will be a different person, and Saturday you will have a different name and be living in a different world.”
“But I will never change, Jean, while I live,” cried Diane, tremulously. “I will always run to meet you when you come to see me.”
They were both off the stage for two minutes while they were speaking.
“But I sha’n’t come to see you,” said Jean. “Good night will be good-by for me.”
François’ reminders were totally different.
“I sha’n’t expect to be noticed by you after you are a marquise,” he said. “My family is not as ancient as that of the Egmont de St. Angel, although we are related, and my ancestors fought with Philippe le Bel. But the Marquis’ family were ennobled before mine, and as for you--good God! we are all parvenus when compared with the D’Orian family, going back to Romulus and Remus.”
This made Diane laugh a little, but it did not loosen the clutch of something like the hand of fate upon her heart, and she frankly burst out crying when François added:
“Nobody will ever dare to call you Skinny again.”