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The dining-room was a really magnificent apartment. There were massive buffets of carved oak, black with age, ornamented with brass mountings. The shelves groaned beneath their load of goblets and salvers of the brightest silver, engraved with the haughty armorial bearings of the house of Champdoce.
I wish you to draw up a document, the particulars of which I will give you presently, and you will outwardly have no connection with the matter." "Very good." "But there is more yet. The Duke of Champdoce has placed a difficult task in your hands. You are engaged in a secret on his behalf." "You know that also?" "I know everything that may be made subservient to our ends.
"But she must feel much humiliated?" "Not a bit; when she wants a heavy amount, she sends off to the Duke de Champdoce, and he always parts; but she doesn't mince matters with him." "It would seem as if you had known the contents of your mistress's letters?" remarked Mascarin with a smile. "Of course I have; I like to know what is in the letters I carry about.
I expect that this flow of self-praise will melt the heart of your client, for he will see that his son had made an effort to rise out of the mire by his own exertions, and will, in this energy, recognize one of the characteristics of the Champdoce family; and on the strength of this testimony he will almost be ready to accept the young man as his son."
But, never heeding the sarcastic question of the Counsellor, Norbert had regained his cart, and was driving off at full speed. Daumon had in no way exaggerated when he said that Norbert was spoken of as the "Young Savage of Champdoce," though no one used this appellation in an insulting form. Public opinion had changed considerably regarding the Duke of Champdoce.
She feared him, but she feared herself more. "What, Diana! Would you refuse me?" asked he, after a moment's pause. "Do you refuse me, when I implore you to be my wife, and to share my name with me? Will you not be the Duchess of Champdoce?" Diana only replied with a glance; but if her eyes spoke plainly, that look said "Yes."
She must see him, and that without a moment's delay, for the danger was imminent. A day now would be worth a year hereafter. She determined that, upon that very night, she would visit Champdoce. A little after midnight, when the inhabitants of the Chateau were wrapped in slumber, she crept on tiptoe down the grand staircase, and made her exit by a side door.
He had offered to sacrifice one-third of his fortune for the honor of forming this connection, and would have given up the whole of it, could he but have seen a child in whose veins ran the united blood of Palouzet and the Champdoce seated upon his knee.
For Henrietta, sure of the Duke of Champdoce, had not hesitated to open her heart to him, describing her situation as it really was; painting her step-mother as he had anticipated she would be; and at every turn certain phrases were repeated, which were so many blows with a dagger to the count. "This is unheard of!" he growled with a curse. "This is incomprehensible!
"I have," said he, "to publish the banns of marriage between " here he made a little pause, and all the congregation were on the tenterhooks of expectation; "between," he continued, "Monsieur Louis Norbert, Marquis de Champdoce, a minor, and only legitimate son of Guillaume Caesar, Duke de Champdoce, and of his wife Isabella de Barnaville, now deceased, but who both formerly resided in this parish, and Desiree Anne Marie Palouzet, minor, and legitimate daughter of Rene Augustus Palouzet, Count de Puymandour, and of Zoe Staplet, his wife, but now deceased, also residents of this parish."
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