She was so beautiful, so peerless, so noble, so proud--and he so utterly unworthy--that naught but her plight had given him courage to utter his proposal.

And she answered him in such terms! "You give me hope, Marquise?
If I come again-- ?" She sighed, and her face, which was once more within the light, showed a look of sad inquiry.
"If I thought that what you have said, you have said out of pity, because you fear lest my necessities should hurt me, I could give you no hope at all.

I have my pride, mon ami.

But if what you have said you would still have said though I had continued mistress of Condillac, then, Tressan, you may repeat it to me hereafter, at a season when I may listen." His joy welled up and overflowed in him as overflows a river in time of spate.
He bent forward, caught her hand, and bore it to his lips.
"Clotilde!" he cried, in a smothered voice; then the door opened, and Marius stepped into the long chamber.
At the creaking sound of the opening door the Seneschal bestirred himself to rise.

Even the very young care not so to be surprised, how much less, then, a man well past the prime of life?
He came up laboriously--the more laboriously by virtue of his very efforts to show himself still nimble in his mistress's eyes.