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"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. "Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed. "He is gone." "But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" "Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."
The schemes and trickeries of his life were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance of John Haygarth's estate.
It is not dead, Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love another? What should divide us?" "Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully, "vague and foolish; wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing."
Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very desperate one.
Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble and even yet I cannot picture to myself that such a thing will be you must come to Cotenoir, you and Valentine.
Here are Gustave Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with two tall slender damsels by their side; and here is Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity.
When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble.
The poor old wanderer, the weary Odysseus, hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures, laid himself down to rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally.
This enabled him to protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the insidious Fleurus at bay. "My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon.
She expected M. Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell, and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing order, nor an easily answered suppliant. "And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy!
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