"Are you married?" he asked, in a trembling voice.
"No," she said, smiling.
"I have a little something," he continued, heaving a sigh, "though I
am not so rich as people think for. A young girl like you must love
diamonds, trinkets, carriages, money. I've got all that to give--after
my death. Hey! if you will--"
The old man's eyes were so shrewd and betrayed such calculation in
this ephemeral love that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, as she shook her
head in sign of refusal, felt that his desire to marry her was solely
to bury his secret in another himself.
"Money!" she said, with a look of scorn which made him satisfied and
angry both; "money is nothing to me. You would be three times as rich
as you are, if you had all the gold that I have refused--" she stopped
suddenly.
"Don't go near that wall, or--"
"But I hear a voice," she said; "it echoes through that wall,--a voice
that is more to me than all your riches."
Before the miser could stop her Marie had laid her hand on a small
colored engraving of Louis XV. on horseback; to her amazement it
turned, and she saw, in a room beneath her, the Marquis de Montauran,
who was loading a musket. The opening, hidden by a little panel on
which the picture was gummed, seemed to form some opening in the
ceiling of the adjoining chamber, which, no doubt, was the bedroom of
the royalist general.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274