And the Marquis, still motionless but distracted, feeling that he had no title to offer his own fortune, suddenly understood her, foresaw in what disgrace this fresh disaster would culminate.
"Ah! my poor friend!" he said at last in a voice trembling with revolt and grief.

"So you have agreed to that marriage--yes, that abominable marriage with that woman's daughter! Yet you swore it should never be! You would rather witness the collapse of everything, you said.

And now you are consenting, I can feel it!" She still wept on in that black, silent drawing-room before the chimney-piece where the fire had died out.

Did not Gerard's marriage to Camille mean a happy ending for herself, a certainty of leaving her son wealthy, loved, and seated at the banquet of life?
However, a last feeling of rebellion arose within her.
"No, no," she exclaimed, "I don't consent, I swear to you that I don't consent as yet.

I am fighting with my whole strength, waging an incessant battle, the torture of which you cannot imagine." Then, in all sincerity, she foresaw the likelihood of defeat.