“At least then, let me take you away as a brother might! You cannot remain here—it is impossible to leave you to this!”
“You will have enough to do,” said she, with a tremor of the lips, “to get your gold away without encumbering yourself . . . with a sister.”
“Curse the gold!” answered the Comte de Brencourt. “No, after all, it brought me here.”
He had got to his feet and stood looking down at her, his eyes kindling. Then he made a great effort over himself, and, stooping, took her hand and kissed it as he might have done amid the gaieties where first he met her.
“To-morrow night I will come again for an answer, Duchesse. I will leave you now; I have given you, I know, a very great shock. And I regret . . .” Again the words stuck. “You must forgive me . . . And, lest you should be anxious, I will not return to the sallette to-night. Indeed, I think it must be getting near dawn.”
“I have given you my answer, Monsieur de Brencourt,” repeated Valentine. There were black rings under her eyes. “Believe me, I do appreciate your devotion. If I could accept, I would.”
“I cannot take that answer,” said Artus de Brencourt gravely. “But I will take an assurance that when you have duly mourned the man to whom you have been so nobly faithful . . . that then, even if I have to wait a year, two years——”
“I can give you no hope,” she said once more.
“You do not love me, Madame, that I have always known. But all I ask is the right to be spent in your service.”
“I had rather, Comte, that you were spent in a worthier.”
He made a gesture. “There exists no worthier,” he said with quiet conviction, and bowing, went towards the door.
But at the door he paused. “One thing more, Duchesse. Since I would sooner die a thousand deaths than implicate you in this attempt of M. de Kersaint’s, I wish to say that should any mischance happen to me within these walls, you may be well assured that I shall give no sign of ever having seen you before. And you, Duchesse—for your own sake, not for mine—will do the same by me, will you not? Promise me that!”
Half by gesture, for speech was getting beyond her, she promised.
“I have the honour to take leave of you,” said the Comte de Brencourt, and he went out.
There was night in Mirabel—cold night and loneliness.