Despise me,--
kill me for it if you will, Le Gardeur! better you did kill me,
perhaps! but I cannot lie to you as I can to other men! Ask me not
to change my resolution, for I neither can nor will." She spoke
with impassioned energy, as if fortifying her refusal by the
reiteration of it.
"It is past comprehension!" was all he could say, bewildered at her
words thus dislocated from all their natural sequence of association.
"Love me and not marry me!--that means she will marry another!"
thought he, with a jealous pang. "Tell me, Angelique," continued
he, after several moments of puzzled silence, "is there some
inscrutable reason that makes you keep my love and reject my hand?"
"No reason, Le Gardeur! It is mad unreason,--I feel that,--but it
is no less true. I love you, but I will not marry you." She spoke
with more resolution now. The first plunge was over, and with it
her fear and trembling as she sat on the brink.
The iteration drove him beside himself. He seized her hands, and
exclaimed with vehemence,--"There is a man--a rival--a more
fortunate lover--behind all this, Angelique des Meloises! It is not
yourself that speaks, but one that prompts you.
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