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Yet when she herself bore the suggestion of it to the Marquis, he had seized upon it, approved it, but adopted it for Florimond's benefit instead. Thereafter war had raged fiercely in the family of Condillac a war between the Marquis and Florimond on the one side, and the Marquise and Marius on the other.
You will remember that she was under my mother's tutelage. The girl, however, could not be constrained. She suborned one of our men to bear a letter to Paris for her, and in answer to it the Queen sent a hot-headed, rash blunderer down to Dauphiny to procure her liberation. He lies now at the bottom of the moat of Condillac." Florimond's face had assumed a look of horror and indignation.
The latter, with a want of foresight which has given rise to the present trouble, misjudging the character of the Dowager of Condillac, entrusted to her care his daughter Valerie pending Florimond's return, when the nuptials would naturally be immediately celebrated. I am probably telling you no more than you already know.
Still, presented it must be, for Florimond would require to know by what motive his brother was impelled ere he could credit him capable of such villainy. Succinctly, but tellingly, Garnache brought out the story of the plot that had been laid for Florimond's assassination, and it joyed him to see the anger rising in the Marquis's face and flashing from his eyes.
An agony of grief took her now, and she fell once more to those awful sobs that awhile ago had shaken her. She had refused to marry Marius that Florimond's life should be spared, knowing that before Marius could reach him she herself would have warned her betrothed. Yet even had that circumstance not existed, she was sure that still she would have refused to do the will of Marius.
She fancied he alluded to the body in the coffin the body of her stepson and she could have laughed at his foolish conclusions that she must account Florimond's death an act of justice upon her for her impiety. But her rising anger left her no room for laughter. "I thought, sir priest, you were come to bury the dead. But it rather seems you are come to talk." He looked at her long and sternly.
"Yet but a moment back you deemed me heartless," she reminded him. "You seemed so indifferent to the fate of Florimond de Condillac." "I must have seemed, then, what I am not," she told him, "for I am far from indifferent to Florimond's fate. The truth is, monsieur, I do not believe Madame de Condillac.
"But to proceed: Madame de Condillac and her precious Benjamin this Marius finding themselves, in Florimond's absence, masters of the situation, have set about turning it to their own best advantage. Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, whilst being nominally under their guardianship, finds herself practically gaoled by them, and odious plans are set before her to marry Marius.
Florimond's father had been his dearest friend. I promised him that I would do his will, and by that promise I am bound. But were Florimond indeed dead, and were I free to choose, I should not choose Marius were he the only man in all the world." Garnache moved nearer to her.
And she, herself, by what ties was she bound to him? By the ties of an old promise, given at an age when she knew not what love meant. He had talked of it with her, and he knew how dispassionately she awaited Florimond's return. Florimond might be betrothed to her her father and his had encompassed that between them but no lover of hers was he.
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