Jacintha came with a message from the colonel:  “Would it be agreeable to Mademoiselle Rose to walk with him at the usual hour?”

“Certainly,” said Rose.

As Jacintha was retiring Edouard called to her to stop a minute.

Then, turning to Rose, he begged her very ceremoniously to reconsider that determination.

“What determination?”

“To sacrifice me to this Colonel Dujardin.”  Still politely, only a little grimly.

Rose opened her eyes.  “Are you mad?” inquired she with quiet hauteur.

“Neither mad nor a fool,” was the reply.  “I love you too well to share your regard with any one, upon any terms; least of all upon these, that there is to be a man in the world at whose beck and call you are to be, and at whose orders you are to break off an interview with me.  Perdition!”

“Dear Edouard, what folly!  Can you suspect me of discourtesy, as well as of—­I know not what.  Colonel Dujardin will join us, that is all, and we shall take a little walk with him.”

“Not I. I decline the intrusion; you are engaged with me, and I have things to say to you that are not fit for that puppy to hear.  So choose between me and him, and choose forever.”

Rose colored.  “I should be very sorry to choose either of you forever; but for this afternoon I choose you.”

“Oh, thank you—­my whole life shall prove my gratitude for this preference.”

Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse to Colonel Dujardin.  She then turned with an air of mock submission to Edouard.  “I am at monsieur’s orders.”

Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good-natured, thanked her again and again for her condescension in setting his heart at rest.  He proposed a walk, since his interference had lost her one.  She yielded a cold assent.  This vexed him, but he took it for granted it would wear off before the end of the walk.  Edouard’s heart bounded, but he loved her too sincerely to be happy unless he could see her happy too; the malicious thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by means of this good feeling of his she revenged herself for his tyranny.  She tortured him as only a woman can torture, and as even she can torture only a worthy man, and one who loves her.  In the course of that short walk this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and inborn arts of her sex, drove pins and needles, needles and pins, of all sorts and sizes, through her lover’s heart.

She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing for long together.  She was peevish, she was ostentatiously patient and submissive, she was inattentive to her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contemplation of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit; she was dogged, repulsive, and cold; and she never was herself a single moment.  They returned to the gate of the Pleasaunce.  “Well, mademoiselle,” said Riviere very sadly, “that interloper might as well have been with us.”