He looks at her for a moment steadily. He has thought her face, in spite of its beauty, false, wicked, and meretricious. He sees it now lovely in its creamy tints, its superb eyes, its chiselled features, and its waves of dusky hair, and withal a soft and tender expression leavening the whole. “No!” he answers slowly. “I don’t hate you at all. It depends on yourself, Gabrielle, if I hate you later!” She marks at once the relenting in his features, and, like the busy bee, improves the shining hour. “You’ll _never_ hate me, for pity’s sake!” she cries, and flinging herself down on the path she wreathes her arms round his knees, while her fierce black eyes, with a good deal of the tiger-cat in their depths, seem to devour greedily his handsome face. “Delaval! who will love you as I do? who will hunger and thirst for your every word and look like me? Oh if you were ever so poor and humble, but still yourself, I would slave for you, _die_ for you! only--only--I could not bear that any other woman should cling to you like this!” and with a sudden spring she throws herself on his breast, panting, breathless, quivering from head to foot. “Delaval, you have pretended to love me. You have kissed me, and you have made me love _you_, till I am mad with misery, till I lose sight of all that women hold dear--pride--reserve--delicacy! For mercy’s sake don’t give me up, and place an insuperable bar between us two!” But he coolly puts her aside--not roughly, but very determinedly. “So!” she says, standing tall and erect before him. “So! words are of no avail. Love is a theme you have heard so often that its name has an empty sound! You are an honourable man, Lord Delaval! Your conscience can never prick you. For you have never acted basely, cruelly, to anyone in your life!” she cries, with a sneer. He feels quite an aversion to her as he answers: “Men may be dishonourable towards women, perhaps. But rely upon it, it is the woman’s fault if they are so! Men may act cruelly, basely, but I’ll be sworn baseness and cruelty have been forced from them in order to check a woman’s undisciplined feelings, in order to recall a woman to the decorum which belongs to her sex! I think, Miss Beranger, since I am not honoured by your good opinion, my best move will be to say ‘Good-bye!’” She feels that she has played her game wretchedly. The man is a vain man; and instead of reaching his heart through fair means, she has lost her temper, wounded his _amour propre_, and placed a further barrier betwixt them. Once more she is down on her knees, her clasped hands lifted, her face quivering with emotion. Gabrielle is a born actress; but now her acting is supremely good, for there is a deal of genuine feeling in it. “Delaval! Forgive! forgive! I was mad to speak as I did! Oh I could kill myself for it! Say you forgive me, Delaval!” But he stands motionless and impassive still.