The true facts of the case astonished her.
"You have loved me! Yet why did you not at once come to see me?"
"Your parents said that you cared for me no longer. I also nearly died
when learning that. At last, I was determined to know the whole truth,
and was sent away from the house, the door being absolutely closed
against me, and I was forbidden to return."
"Then they shut the door in your face? Yet my mother told me that you
did not love me, and I could but believe her, since having seen you
several times with that young lady, Mademoiselle Claire, I thought
naturally you were obeying your father."
"No. I was waiting. But it was cowardly on my part thus to tremble
before him. My great mistake has been to allow the matter to go so
far; for my duty was to have trusted only in you, to have insisted upon
seeing you personally, and to have acted with you."
There was a short silence. Angelique sat erect for an instant, as if
she had received a blow, and her expression grew cold and hard, and her
forehead was cut by an angry wrinkle.
"So we have both of us been deceived. Falsehoods have been told in order
to separate us from each other. Notwithstanding our mutual love, we have
been tortured to such a degree that they have almost killed us both.
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