The meeting in the inn at Fleurier
had left with her a vastly different impression from that which it had
left with him.
Without smiling, he now bowed very courteously, and placed a chair for
her near where she stood.
"Mademoiselle," he said, with great tenderness, yet most respectfully, "a
harder heart than mine would be moved by your gentleness and beauty."
And here my own heart beat very rapidly at sound of another man speaking
so adoringly to my beloved.
She looked at him questioningly, as if his tone and manner showed that
she had misjudged him. His bearing was so gentle and sympathetic that she
could not but be deceived by it. She ceased to show repugnance, and sat
in the chair that he had brought.
"Monsieur," she said, "in my first opinion I may have wronged you. If
your heart is truly moved, you can demonstrate your goodness by asking
for my father's freedom. M. de la Chatre will grant it to you. You have a
claim on his favor, as he says, while I have none. Free my father, then,
and make me happy!"
Poor Julie! She thought not of herself. She knew that it would be
useless to ask anything for me. Yet there was one thing that might be had
from the situation--her father's freedom. So she summoned her energies,
and devoted them to striving for that, though she was in terror of my
being at any moment discovered.
"I would make you the happiest of women," said Montignac, in a low,
impassioned tone, falling on one knee and taking her hand, "if you would
make me the happiest of men.
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