"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, n.o.ble 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 a.s.surance, 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.