And in the morning they met, as she had promised him. Both pale, although from different causes, and both showing signs of having slept but little. They broke their fast together and in silence, which at last he ended by asking her whether the night had brought her reflection, and whether such reflection had made her appreciate their position and the need to set out at once.
"It needed no reflection to make me realise our position better than I did yesterday," she answered. "I had hoped that it would have brought you to a different frame of mind. But I am afraid that it has not done so."
"I fail to see what change my frame of mind admits of," he answered testily.
"Have you thought," she asked at last, and her voice was cold and concentrated, "that this man is giving his life for you?"
"I have feared," he answered, with incredible callousness, "that to save his craven skin he might elect to do differently at the last moment."
She looked at him in a mighty wonder, her dark eyes open to their widest, and looking black by the extreme dilation of the pupils.
So vast was her amazement at this unbounded egotism that it almost overruled her disgust.
"You cast epithets about you and bestow titles with a magnificent unconsciousness of how well they might fit you."
"Ah? For example?"
"In calling this man a craven, you take no thought for the cowardice that actuates you into hiding while he dies for you?"
"Cowardice?" he ejaculated. Then a flush spread on his face. "Ma foi, Mademoiselle," said he, in a quivering voice, "your words betray thoughts that would be scarcely becoming in the Vicomtesse d'Ombreval."
"That, Monsieur, is a point that need give you little thought. I am not likely to become the Vicomtesse."
He bestowed her a look of mingling wonder and anger. Had he, indeed, heard her aright? Did her words imply that she disdained the honour?
"Surely," he gasped, voicing those doubts of his, "you do not mean that you would violate your betrothal contract? You do not - "
"I mean, Monsieur," she cut in, "that I will give myself to no man I do not love."
"Your immodesty," said he, "falls in nothing short of the extraordinary frame of mind that you appear to be developing in connection with other matters. We shall have you beating a drum and screeching the Ca ira in the streets of Paris presently, like Mademoiselle de Mericourt."
She rose from the table, her face very white, her hand pressing upon her corsage. A moment she looked at him. Then:
"Do not let us talk of ourselves," she exclaimed at last. "There is a man in the Conciergerie who dies at noon unless you are forthcoming before then to save him. He himself will not betray you because he - No matter why, he will not. Tell me, Monsieur, how do you, who account yourself a man of honour above everything, intend to deal with this situation?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Once he is dead and done with - provided that he does not first betray me - I trust that, no longer having this subject to harp upon, you will consent to avail yourself of our passport, and accompany me out of France."
"Honour does not for instance, suggest to you that you should repair to the Conciergerie and take the place that belongs to you, and which another is filling?"
A sudden light of comprehension swept now into his face.
"At last I understand what has been in your mind since yesterday, what has made you so odd in your words and manner. You have thought that it was perhaps my duty as a man of honour to go and effect the rescue of this fellow. But, my dear child, bethink you of what he is, and of what I am. Were he a gentleman - my equal - my course would stand clearly defined. I should not have hesitated a moment.
But this canaille! Ma foi! let me beg of you to come to your senses.
The very thought is unworthy in you."
"I understand you," she answered him, very coldly. "You use a coward's arguments, and you have the effrontery to consider yourself a man of honour - a nobleman. I no longer marvel that there is a revolution in France."
She stood surveying him for a moment, then she quietly left the room.
He stared after her.
"Woman, woman!" he sighed, as he set down his napkin and rose in his turn.
His humour was one of pitying patience for a girl that had not the wit to see that to ask him - the most noble d'Ombreval - to die that La Boulaye might live was very much like asking him to sacrifice his life to save a dog's.
