“I--I--Raoul!” she exclaimed, with such a blending of wonder and loathing in her face, such an expression of indignation on her tongue, that her lover perceived at once, that, whatever might be the infamy of her father, of her husband, of this climax of falsehood and self-degradation, she, at least, was guiltless. “The mistress of the king! what king? what mean you? are you distraught?” “Ha! you are ignorant, you are innocent of that, then. You are not yet indoctrinated into the noble uses for which your honorable lord intends you. It is the town’s talk, Melanie. How is it you, whom it most concerns, alone have not heard it?” “Raoul,” she said, earnestly, imploringly, “I know not if there be any meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what you deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure you, by your father’s noble name, by your mother’s honor, show me the worst; but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and now hears my words, I am not faithless.” “Not faithless? Are you not the wife of another?” “No!” she replied enthusiastically. “I am not. For I am yours, and while you live I can not wed another. Whom God hath joined man can not put asunder.” “I fear me that plea will avail us little,” Raoul answered. “But say on, dearest Melanie, and believe that there is nothing you can ask which I will not give you gladly--even if it were my own life-blood. Say on, so shall we best arrive at the truth of this intricate and black affair.” “Mark me, then, Raoul, for every word I shall speak is as true as the sun in heaven. It is near two years now since we heard that you had fallen in battle, and that your body had been carried off by the barbarians. Long, long I hoped and prayed, but prayers and hopes were alike in vain. I wrote to you often, as I promised, but no line from you has reached me since the day when you sailed for India, and that made me fear that the dread news was true. But at the last, to make assurance doubly sure, all my own letters were returned to me six months since, with their seals unbroken, and an endorsement from the authorities in India that the person addressed was not to be found. Then hope itself was over; and my father, who never from the first had doubted that you were no more--” “Out on him! out on him! the heartless villain!” the young man interrupted her indignantly. “He knows, as well as I myself, that I am living; although it is no fault of his or his coadjutors that I am so. He knows not as yet, however, that I am _here_; but he shall know it ere long to his cost, my Melanie.” “At least,” she answered in a faltering voice, “at least he _swore_ to me that you were dead; and never having ceased to persecute me, since the day that fatal tidings reached us, to become the wife of La Rochederrien, now marquis de Ploermel, he now became doubly urgent--” “And you Melanie! you yielded! I had thought you would have died sooner.”