“You were not so timid in bygone days.”

“Then I was my own mistress; and if I lost my reputation, the loss affected me only; but on my wedding day I had a sacred trust confided to me—­the honor of the man who has given me his name, and that I must guard with jealous care.”

“Then you love me no longer.”

She stopped suddenly, and overwhelming Norbert with one of those glacial glances which she knew so well how to assume, answered in measured accents,—­

“Your memory fails you; all that has remained to me of the past is the rejection of a proposal conveyed in a certain letter that I wrote.”

Norbert interrupted her by a piteous gesture of entreaty.

“Mercy!” said he.  “You would pardon me if you knew all the horrors of the punishment that I am enduring.  I was mad, blind, besotted, nor did I love you as I do at this moment.”

A smile played round Diana’s beautiful mouth, for Norbert had told her nothing that she did not know before, but she wished to hear it from his own lips.

“Alas!” murmured she; “I can only frame my reply with the fatal words, ‘Too late!’”

“Diana!”

He endeavored to seize her hand, but she drew it away with a rapid movement.

“Do not use that name,” said she; “you have no right to do so.  Is it not sufficient to have blighted the young girl’s life? and yet you seek to compromise the honor of the wife.  You must forget me; do you understand?  It is to tell you this that I am here.  The other day, when I saw you again, I lost my self-command.  My heart leapt up at the sight of you, and, fool that I was, I permitted you to see this; but base no hopes on my weakness.  I said to you, Let us be friends.  It was a mere act of madness.  We can never be friends, and had better, therefore, treat each other as strangers.  Do you forget that lying tongues at Bevron accused me of being your mistress?  Do you think that this falsehood has not reached my husband’s ears?  One day, when your name was mentioned in his presence, I saw a gleam of hatred and jealousy in his eye.  Great heavens! should he, on my return, suspect that my hand had rested in yours, he would expel me from his house like some guilty wretch!  The door of our house must remain for ever closed to you.  I am miserable indeed.  Be a man; and if your heart still holds one atom of the love you once bore for me, prove it by never seeking me again.”

As she concluded she hurried away, leaving in Norbert’s heart a more deadly poison than the one she had endeavored to persuade the son to administer to his father, the Duke de Champdoce.  She knew each chord that vibrated in his heart, and could play on it at will.  She felt sure that in a month he would again be her slave, and that she could exercise over him a sway more despotic than she had yet done, and, in addition to this, that he would assist her in executing a cruel scheme of revenge, which she had long been plotting.