“And I wager,” boldly said Marianne, “that you have never thought of me.”

“Of you?”

“Of me.  Of that mad Marianne, who is the maddest creature of all those you have met in your travels from the North Pole to Cambodia, but who has by no means a wicked heart, although a sufficiently unhappy one, and that has never ceased to beat a little too rapidly at certain reminiscences which you do not recall, perhaps—­who knows?”

“I remember everything,” replied the duke in a grave voice.

Marianne looked at him and commenced to laugh.

“Oh! how you say that, mon Dieu! Do you remember I used to call you Don Carlos?  Well, you have just reminded me of Philip II.  ’I remember everything!’ B-r-r! what a funereal tone.  Our reminiscences are not, however, very dramatic.”

“That depends on the good or ill effects that they cause,” said Rosas very seriously.

“Ah!  God forgive me if I have ever willingly done you the least harm, my dear Rosas.  Give me your hand.  I have always loved you dearly, my friend.”

She drew him gently toward her, half bending her face under the cold glance of the young man: 

“Look at me closely and see if I lie.”

The duke actually endeavored to read the gray-blue eyes of Marianne; but so strange a flash darted from them, that he recoiled, withdrawing his hands from the pressure of those fingers.

“Come, come!” she said, “I see that my cat-like eyes still make you afraid.  Are they, then, very dreadful?”

She changed their expression to one of sweetness, humility, timidity and winsomeness.

“After all, that is something to be proud of, my dear duke.  It is very flattering to make a man tremble who has killed tigers as our sportsmen kill partridges.”

“You know very well why I am still sufficiently a child to tremble before you, Marianne,” murmured Jose.  “At my age, it is folly; but I am as superstitious as gamblers—­or sailors, those other gamblers, who stake their lives, and I have never met you without feeling that I was about to suffer.”

“To suffer from what?”

“To suffer through you,” said the duke.  “Do you know that if I had never met you, it is probable that I should never have seen all those countries of which I spoke just now, and that I should have been married long ago, at Madrid or at Toledo?”

“And I prevented you?—­”

Rosas interrupted Marianne, saying abruptly, and smiling almost sadly: 

“Ah! my dear one, if you only knew—­you have prevented many things.”

“If I have prevented you from being unhappy, I am delighted.  Besides, it is evident that you have never had a very determined inclination for marriage, seeing that you have preferred to trot around the world.”

“Like Don Quixote, eh?  Do you know, moreover, since we are talking of all these things, that you have saved me from dying in the corner like an abandoned dog?”