"Heavens! Urbain," cried he, "did I not strike you? It seems to me that I did. But why didn't you answer me?"
"I don't know," replied M. de Villemer, much agitated. "I did not recognize your voice! Did you speak to me? Whom did you take me for, then?"
"For a robber, in sober earnest! Did you not frighten Mlle de Saint-Geneix just now?"
"I perhaps frightened her horse, unintentionally. Where is she?"
"Why, she was afraid and took to flight. Did you not hear her riding off toward the house?"
"And why should she have been afraid of me?" rejoined the Marquis, with singular bitterness. "I did not wish to offend her." And then, weary of deception, he added, "I merely wanted to speak to her!"
"Yes, perhaps. I wanted to know whether she loved you."
"I do not know. I could not say a word to her."
"Let us go in, brother," said the Duke. "I see that you are in a fever, and the dew is falling."
"No matter!" said the Marquis, seating himself on a block at the edge of the walk. "I wish I was dead!"
"Urbain!" cried the Duke, a sudden light striking him at last; "it is you who are in love with Mlle de Saint-Geneix!"
"I in love with her? Is she not,--is she not yours?"
"Never, since you love her! On my part it was only a caprice, an idle, selfish vanity; but, as truly as I am my father's son, she has not the least inclination toward me; she has just simply understood nothing of my artifices; she is as pure, as free, and as proud as on the day she came among us."
"Why did you leave her alone in this wood after you had brought her out into it?"
"Ah! you suspect me after the solemn assertion that I have just made! Can it be that love is making you insane?"
"You have played with your promise about this young lady. For you, in questions of gallantry, oaths count nothing; I know that. If it were otherwise, would you and your fortunate compeers be able to persuade so many women? Do you not know how to slip away from all engagements? Was it honorable, this absurd manœuvring,--which may have been very skilfully done for aught I know about such games,--to draw her into your arms through fascination, through spite, through all the weak or bad impulses in woman's nature? Is there anything that you do respect! Is not virtue, in your eyes, an infirmity of which a poor innocent girl, helpless and inexperienced, must be cured? Is not the abyss into which you want to see her fling herself, in your opinion, the rational condition, fortunate or fatal, of a girl without a dowry and without an ancestry? See! did you not mock me this very morning, when you wished to persuade me that you would marry her! And this is what you said only a moment ago: 'It is you who are in love with her. For me, it was only a fancy, an idle, selfish vanity.' Come, it is frightful,--this libertine vanity of yours! It drags down into the mire all that comes near you! Your very gaze soils a woman, and it is too much for me already that this girl has undergone the insult of your thoughts. I love her no longer."