Page:Hope-indiscretions of duchess.djvu/189

Rh duke. But she was clinging to me now, in great distress that I must fight—and indeed I had rather have fought at another time myself—and in fresh terror of her mother’s anger, seeing that I should not be there to bear it for her.

“For,” she said, “we have had a terrible quarrel just before you came. I told her that unless I saw you within an hour nothing but force should keep me here, and that if they kept me here by force, I would find means to kill myself; and that I would not see nor speak to the duke unless he brought me to you, according to his promise; and that if he sent his necklace again—for he sent it here half an hour ago—I would not send it back as I did then, but would fling it out of the window yonder into the cattle pond, where he could go and fetch it out himself.”

And my dearest Marie, finding increased courage from reciting her courageous speech, and from my friendly hearing of it, raised her voice, and her eyes flashed, so that she looked yet more beautiful; and again did I forget inexorable time. But it struck me that there was small wonder that Mme. Delhasse’s temper had not been of the best nor calculated to endure patiently such a vexatious encounter as befell her when she ran against me on the landing outside her door.

Yet Marie’s courage failed again; and I told her that before we fought I would tell my second of her state, so that if she came not and I were wounded (of worse I did not speak), he would come to the inn and bring her to me. And