His voice was soft, and very affectionate. He evidently was not angry at what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an aching heart.
"I don't exactly trust your kind of care," said Madame d'Argy, with a smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.
She went, however, because Fred repeated:
"But go and see the Abbe Bardin."
Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and approached Giselle with passionate eagerness.
"Are you sure I am not dreaming," said he. "Is it you—really you who advise me to marry Jacqueline?"
"Who else should it be?" she answered, very calm to all appearance. "Who can know better than I? But first you must oblige me by lying down again, or else I will not say one word more. That is right. Now keep still. Your mother is furiously displeased with me—I am sorry—but she will get over it. I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good wife— a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married formerly. She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has profited by its lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely repentant for her childish peccadilloes."
"Giselle," said Fred, "look me full in the face—yes, look into my eyes frankly and hide nothing. Your eyes never told anything but the truth. Why do you turn them away? Do you really and truly wish this marriage?"
She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her hand, which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort she prevented from trembling. Then her nerves gave way under his long and silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh that sounded to herself very unnatural.
"My poor, dear friend," she cried, "how easily you men are duped! You are trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon an honest act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly inclined —don't tell me you are not—whether, in short, you marry Jacqueline, I shall be really as glad of it as I pretend. But have you not found out what I have aimed at all along? Do you think I did not know from the very first what it was that made you seek me?
"I was not the rope, but I had lived near the rose; I reminded you of her continually. We two loved her; each of us felt we did. Even when you said harm of her, I knew it was merely because you longed to utter her name, and repeat to yourself her perfections. I laughed, yes, I laughed to myself, and I was careful how I contradicted you. I tried to keep you safe for her, to prevent your going elsewhere and forming attachments which might have resulted in your forgetting her. I did my best—do me justice—I did my best; perhaps sometimes I pushed things a little far in her interest, in that of your mother, but in yours more than all; in yours, for God knows I am all for you," said Giselle, with sudden and involuntary fervor.
"Yes, I am all yours as a friend, a faithful friend," she resumed, almost frightened by the tones of her own voice; "but as to the slightest feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the most platonic— yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of self-conceit. Dear Fred, don't imagine it—Enguerrand would never have allowed it."
She was smiling, half laughing, and he looked at her with astonishment, asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note. Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her life was a masterpiece.
"Ah, Giselle!" he said at last, not knowing what to think, "I adore you!
I revere you!"
"Yes," she replied, with a smile, gracious, yet with a touch of sadness,
"I know you do. But her you love!"
Might it not have been sweet to her had he answered "No, I loved her once, and remembered that old love enough to risk my life for her, but in reality I now love only you—all the more at this moment when I see you love me more than yourself." But, instead, he murmured only, like a man. and a lover: "And Jacqueline—do you think she loves me?" His anxiety, a thrill that ran through all his frame, the light in his eyes, his sudden pallor, told more than his words.
If Giselle could have doubted his love for Jacqueline before, she would have now been convinced of it. The conviction stabbed her to the heart. Death is not that last sleep in which all our faculties, weakened and exhausted, fail us; it is the blow which annihilates our supreme illusion and leaves us disabused in a cold and empty world. People walk, talk, and smile after this death—another ghost is added to the drama played on the stage of the world; but the real self is dead.
Giselle was too much of a woman, angelic as she was, to have any courage left to say: "Yes, I know she loves you."
She said instead, in a low voice: "That is a question you must ask of her."
Meantime, in the next room they could hear Madame d'Argy vehemently repeating: "Never! No, I never will consent! Is it a plot between you?"
They heard also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried, her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted, her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren; and, as he drew these pictures, he came back, again and again, to his main argument:
"I will answer for their happiness: I will answer for the future."
His authority as a priest gave weight to this assurance, at least Madame d'Argy felt it so. She went on saying never, but less and less emphatically, and apparently she ceased to say it at last, for three months later the d'Etaples, the Rays, the d'Avrignys and the rest, received two wedding announcements in these words:
"Madame d'Argy has the honor to inform you of the marriage of her son,
M. Frederic d'Argy, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, to Mademoiselle de
Nailles."
The accompanying card ran thus:
"The Baroness de Nailles has the honor to inform you of the marriage of Mademoiselle Jacqueline de Nailles, her stepdaughter, to M. Frederic d'Argy."
Congratulations showered down on both mother and stepmother. A love- match is nowadays so rare! It turned out that every one had always wished all kinds of good fortune to young Madame d'Argy, and every one seemed to take a sincere part in the joy that was expressed on the occasion, even Dolly, who, it was said, had in secret set her heart on Fred for herself; even Nora Sparks, who, not having carried out her plans, had gone back to New York, whence she sent a superb wedding present. Madame de Nailles apparently experienced at the wedding all the emotions of a real mother.
The roses at Lizerolles bloomed that year with unusual beauty, as if to welcome the young pair. Modeste sang 'Nunc Dimittis'. The least demonstrative of all those interested in the event was Giselle.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
As we grow older we lay aside harsh judgments and sharp words
Blow which annihilates our supreme illusion
Death is not that last sleep
Fool (there is no cure for that infirmity)
The worst husband is always better than none