understand the extreme measure resorted to by M. de Tregars. By her own pride she could understand his. No more than he, in his place, would she have been willing to expose herself to a certain refusal. What was there, then, so extraordinary in the fact of his coming directly to her, in his exposing to her frankly and loyally his situation, his projects, and his hopes?
“Good heavens!” she thought, horrified at the sentiments which she discovered in the deep recesses of her soul, “good heavens! I hardly know myself any more. Here I am actually approving what he has done!”
Well, yes, she did approve him, attracted, fascinated, by the very strangeness of the situation. Nothing seemed to her more admirable than the conduct of Marius de Tregars sacrificing his fortune and his most legitimate aspirations to the honor of his name, and condemning himself to work for his living.
“That one,” she thought, “is a man; and his wife will have just cause to be proud of him.”
Involuntarily she compared him to the only men she knew: to M. Favoral, whose miserly parsimony had made his whole family wretched; to Maxence, who did not blush to feed his disorders with the fruits of his mother’s and his sister’s labor.
How different was Marius! If he was poor, it was of his own will. Had she not seen what confidence he had in himself. She shared it fully. She felt certain that, within the required delay, he would conquer that indispensable fortune. Then he might present himself boldly. He would take her, away from the miserable surroundings among which she seemed fated to live: she would become the Marchioness de Tregars.
“Why, then, not answer, Yes!” thought she, with the harrowing emotions of the gambler who is about to stake his all upon one card. And what a game for Mlle. Gilberte, and what a stake!
Suppose she had been mistaken. Suppose that Marius should be one of those villains who make of seduction a science. Would she still be her own mistress, after answering? Did she know to what hazards such an engagement would expose her? Was she not about rushing blindfolded towards those deceiving perils where a young girl leaves her reputation, even when she saves her honor?
She thought, for a moment, of consulting her mother. But she knew Mme. Favoral’s shrinking timidity, and that she was as incapable of giving any advice as to make her will prevail. She would be frightened; she would approve all; and, at the first alarm, she would confess all.
“Am I, then, so weak and so foolish,” she thought, “that I cannot take a determination which affects me personally?”
She could not close her eyes all night; but in the morning her resolution was settled.
And toward one o’clock:
“Are we not going out mother?” she said.
Mme. Favoral was hesitating.
“These early spring days are treacherous,” she objected: “you caught cold yesterday.”
“My dress was too thin. To-day I have taken my precautions.”
They started, taking their work with them, and came to occupy their accustomed seats.
Before they had even passed the gates, Mlle. Gilberte had recognized Marius de Tregars and the Count de Villegre, walking in one of the side alleys. Soon, as on the day before, they took two chairs, and settled themselves within hearing.
Never had the young girl’s heart beat with such violence. It is easy enough to take a resolution; but it is not always quite so easy to execute it, and she was asking herself if she would have strength enough to articulate a word. At last, gathering her whole courage:
“You don’t believe in dreams, do you mother?” she asked.
Upon this subject, as well as upon many others, Mme. Favoral had no particular opinion.
“Why do you ask the question?” said she.
“Because I have had such a strange one.”
“Oh!”
“It seemed to me that suddenly a young man, whom I did not know, stood before me. He would have been most happy, said he to me, to ask my hand, but he dared not, being very poor. And he begged me to wait three years, during which he would make his fortune.”
Mme. Favoral smiled.
“Why it’s quite a romance,” said she.
“But it wasn’t a romance in my dream,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. “This young man spoke in a tone of such profound conviction, that it was impossible for me, as it were, to doubt him. I thought to myself that he would be incapable of such an odious villainy as to abuse the confiding credulity of a poor girl.”
“And what did you answer him?”
Moving her seat almost imperceptibly, Mlle. Gilberte could, from the corner of her eye, have a glimpse of M. de Tregars. Evidently he was not missing a single one of the words which she was addressing to her mother. He was whiter than a sheet; and his face betrayed the most intense anxiety.
This gave her the energy to curb the last revolts of her conscience.
“To answer was painful,” she uttered; “and yet I—dared to answer him. I said to him, ‘I believe you, and I have faith in you. Loyally and faithfully I shall await your success; but until then we must be strangers to one another. To resort to ruse, deceit, and falsehood would be unworthy of us. You surely would not expose to a suspicion her who is to be your wife.’ ”
“Very well,” approved Mme. Favoral; “only I did not know you were so romantic.”
She was laughing, the good lady, but not loud enough to prevent Gilberte from hearing M. de Tregars’ answer.
“Count de Villegre,” said he, “my old friend, receive the oath which I take to devote my life to her who has not doubted me. It is to-day the 4th of May, 1870—on the 4th of May, 1873, I shall have succeeded: I feel it, I will it, it must be!”
XV
It was done: Gilberte Favoral had just irrevocably disposed of herself. Prosperous or wretched, her destiny henceforth was linked with another. She had set the wheel in motion; and she could no longer hope to control its direction, any more than the will can pretend to alter the course of the ivory ball upon the surface of the roulette-table. At the outset of this great storm of passion which had suddenly surrounded her, she felt an immense surprise, mingled with unexplained apprehensions and vague terrors.
Around her, apparently, nothing was changed. Father, mother, brother, friends, gravitated mechanically in their accustomed orbits. The same daily facts repeated themselves monotonous and regular as the tick-tack of the clock.
And yet an event had occurred more prodigious for her than the moving of a mountain.
Often during the weeks that followed, she would repeat to herself, “Is it true, is it possible even?”
Or else she would run to a mirror to make sure once more that nothing upon
