The Trampling of the Lilies | Page 6

his manhood he had the right to say.

She drew back before him, and shrank in some measure of fear, for he
looked very fierce. Moreover, he had said things which professed him a
revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a class which she had
been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence which it
might be ill to excite.
"Monsieur," she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her
riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, "you are not
yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so
spoken to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us
forget this scene. Shall we?" Her tones grew seductively conciliatory.
La Boulaye half turned from her, and his smouldering eye fell upon
"The Discourses" lying on the grass. He stooped and picked up the
volume. The act might have seemed symbolical. For a moment he had
cast aside his creed to woo a woman, and now that she had denied him
he returned to Rousseau, and gathered up the tome almost in penitence
at his momentary defection.
"I am quite myself, Mademoiselle," he answered quietly. His cheeks
were flushed, but beyond that, his excitement seemed to have withered.
"It is you who yesternight, for one brief moment and again to-day -
were not yourself, and to that you owe it that I have spoken to you as I
have done."
Between these two it would seem as the humour of the one waned, that
of the other waxed. Her glance kindled anew at his last words.
"I?" she echoed. "I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the
Secretary?"
" Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you - you smiled so
sweetly - "
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. "See what you
are for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A
woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but
you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do

not deserve to be treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a
kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and
you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted
myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you
again to-day, you repay me with insults!"
"Stop!" he cried, rousing himself once more. "That is too much to say,
Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her.
To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures
it is enjoined to love the same God whom the King loves, and there is
no insult to God in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman
more than that?"
"Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest a
discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it suffice
that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and your
manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you
compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now,
Monsieur, and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it
reopened, else shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my
father or my brother."
"You may seek it now, Suzanne," quoth a voice from the thicket at her
back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different
ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de
Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of
age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might
have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though
handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow.
But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his
carefully dressed black hair there were few strands of grey.
He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his
daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last -
"Well?" he demanded. "What is the matter?"
"It is nothing, Monsieur," his daughter answered him. "A trifling affair

'twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you."
"It is not nothing, my lord," cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating oddly.
"It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it." He was in
a very daring mood that morning.
The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into
his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow.