--Wenceslas, my
gown!"
She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the glass, and
finished dressing without heeding the Baron, as calmly as if she had
been alone in the room.
"Wenceslas, are you ready?--Go first."
She had been watching Montes in the glass and out of the corner of her
eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an indication of the
weakness which delivers a strong man over to a woman's fascinations;
she now took his hand, going so close to him that he could not help
inhaling the terrible perfumes which men love, and by which they
intoxicate themselves; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked
at him reproachfully.
"You have my full permission to go and tell your history to Monsieur
Crevel; he will never believe you. I have a perfect right to marry
him, and he becomes my husband the day after to-morrow.--I shall make
him very happy.--Good-bye; try to forget me."
"Oh! Valerie," cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, "that is
impossible!--Come to Brazil!"
Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave.
"Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will be your
wife; but your expression at this moment strikes me as very
suspicious."
"I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends threw this
girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the outcome of chance!"
said Montes.
"Then I am to forgive you?" she asked, with a smile.
"But you will marry, all the same?" asked the Baron, in an agony of
jealousy.
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