"That is very beautiful; and I am sure that you mean it now. But it could not last. You are a very proud man; you are _gentilhomme de race_. It would in time become intolerable to you if you believed that any one living man had any title to point a finger of scorn at you. You have a right to know what my relations were with Lord Gervase: it is necessary for all the peace of our future that you should know everything,--know that there is nothing more left for you to know. You can only be convinced of that if you yourself hear what I say to him. Go; and wait there." Brandolin hesitates. To listen unseen is a part which seems very cowardly to him, and yet she is right, no doubt; all the peace of the future may depend on it. He is ready to pledge himself blindly in the dark in all ways, but he knows that she, in forbidding him to do so, speaks the word of wisdom, of foresight, and of truth. "Go," she repeats. "Men have a thousand ways of proving the truth of whatever they say; we have none, or next to none. If you refuse me this, the sole poor evidence that I can produce, I will never be to you anything that you now wish. Never; that I swear to you." He hesitates, and looks at her with a long inquiring regard. Then he bows, and goes. After all, she is within her rights. She has no other means to show him with any proof what this man whose name is so odiously entangled with her own has, or has not, been to her. The house is still quite silent, and no one is likely to come into those rooms until much later. Every syllable said in the small library can be heard in any part of the larger one. He stands in the embrasure of one of the windows, the velvet curtains making a screen behind him. He seems to wait for hours; in reality only five minutes have passed when he hears the door of the great library open, and Gervase passes quickly through the apartment without seeing him, and goes on into the one where she awaits his coming. "Are you really risen so early?" she says, with a sarcastic coldness in her voice. "I remembered afterwards that it was too cruel to name to you any hour before noon." "You are unkind," he answers. "To hear what I hope to hear, you may be sure that I would have gone through much greater trials than even rising with the lark, had you commanded it." His words are light, but his accent is tender and appealing. "What do you hope to hear?" she asks, abruptly. The question embarrasses him and sounds cold. "I hope to hear that you pardon me the past and will deign to crown my future." "I pardon you the past, certainly. With neither your present nor your future have I anything to do." "You say that very cruelly,--so cruelly that it makes your forgiveness more unkind than your hatred would be."