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Page 64
"Is my presence dangerous to you, sir?"
"How, dangerous?" he said, laughingly. "I do not understand you, my dear
madam."
"Why do you avoid me? What have I done to you? What means this new and
disagreeable manner which you affect toward me? It is really a very
strange thing that you should become less polite to me, as I am more so to
you. They persecute one for years to induce me to show you a pleasant
countenance, and when I try my best to do so, you pout. What does it mean?
What has got into your head? I should be infinitely curious to know."
"It is quite simple, and I am going to enlighten you in two words. It has
got into my head that after being not very amiable to me, you are now
almost too much so. I am sincerely touched and charmed at it; but I really
fear, sometimes, to turn too much to my own profit attentions to which I
am far from having the sole right. You know how fond I am of your husband.
There can be no question of jealousy in this case, of course; but a man's
love is proud and prompt to take umbrage. Without stooping to low and
otherwise impossible sentiments, Pierre, seeing himself somewhat
neglected, might feel offended and afflicted, at which we would both be
greatly grieved, would we not?"
"I do not know how to do anything half-way," she said with a gesture of
impatience. "How can I change my nature? It is with my own heart, and not
with that of another, that I love and that I hate; and then, why should it
not enter into my plans to excite Pierre's jealousy? My old traditional
hatred for you has perhaps made this deep calculation; he would kill
either you or me, and that would be as good a denouement as any other."
"You must allow me to prefer another," said Lucan, still trying, but
without much success, to give a cheerful turn to this wildly passionate
conversation.
"However," she went on, "you may rest easy, my dear sir. Pierre is not
jealous. He suspects nothing, as they say in plays!"
She laughed one of her wicked laughs, and added at once in a graver tone:
"And what could he suspect? In being amiable toward you, I am merely
acting under order, and no one can tell how much of it is genuine and how
much put on."
"I feel quite certain that you don't know yourself," he said, laughingly.
"You are a person of naturally restless disposition; you require
agitation, and when there is none you try to imitate it as best as you
can. Whether you like, or whether you don't like your step-father, is not
a very dramatic affair. There is no room here for any but very simple and
very ordinary sentiments. It is well enough to complicate them a
little--is it not, my dear?"
"Yes, my dear!" she said, emphasizing ironically the last word.
Whereupon she started her horse at a gallop.
They were then just reaching the edge of the woods. He soon saw her leave
the direct road that led across them, and take a path over the heath as if
intending to dash through the thickest of the timber. At the same instant
Clotilde ran up to him, and touching his shoulder with the tip of her
whip:
"Where in the world is Julia going?" she said.
Lucan replied with a vague gesture and a smile.
"I am sure," rejoined Clotilde, "that she is going to drink at that
fountain, yonder. She was complaining a little while since of being
thirsty. Do follow her, dear, will you, and prevent her doing so. She is
so warm! It might be fatal to her. Run, I beg of you."
Monsieur de Lucan gave the reins to his horse, and he started like the
wind. Julia had already disappeared under cover of the woods. He followed
her track; but among the timber, the roots and the roughness of the ground
somewhat checked his speed. At a short distance, in the center of a narrow
clearing, the labor of ages and the filtrations of the soil had hollowed
out one of those mysterious fountains whose limpid water, moss-grown
banks, and aspect of deep solitude delight the imagination, and give rise
to so many poetic legends. When Monsieur de Lucan was able once more to
see Julia, she had alighted from her horse. The admirably trained animal
stood quietly two or three steps away, browsing the young foliage, while
his mistress, down on her knees and stooping over the edge of the spring,
was drinking from her hands.
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