The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [191]
“I love your devotedness,” Milady told him.
“Alas, is that all? Do you love nothing else in me?”
“Yes, you.” She took his hand. “I love you, too, for yourself!”
The burning pressure of her hand made him tremble; her mere touch set him afire, as if that fever which consumed Milady had attacked him and was now blazing through his veins.
“So you love me!” he cried hoarsely. “You love me! Oh, if that were really so, I would go mad!”
He clasped her in his arms. She made no effort to turn her lips away from his kisses but she did not respond to them. Her lips were cold. It was as if he had embraced a statue. But he was none the less drunk with joy and wild with desire. He almost believed in Milady’s tenderness, he almost credited de Vardes with the crime he knew de Vardes had not committed. If at that moment the Comte de Vardes had stood before him, D’Artagnan would have killed him then and there. Milady seized the occasion:
“His—name—is—”
“De Vardes, I know it!”
Milady grasped both his hands, stepped back, and looked deep into his eyes, as though to read into the very depths of his heart. Her gaze brought him back to his senses. He realized that by allowing himself to be carried away, he had blundered.
“Tell me, tell me, I say, how do you know it!”
“How do I know it?”
“Yes.”
“I know it because yesterday in a salon where I happened to be visiting, Monsieur de Vardes displayed a ring which he said he had received from you.”
“The wretch!”
This epithet, quite understandably, re-echoed in D’Artagnan’s inmost heart.
“And so—?” Milady challenged.
“And so I will avenge you of this wretch,” D’Artagnan boasted, with all the airs of Don Japhet of Armenia.
“Oh, thanks, my brave friend,” Milady cried. “I cannot thank you enough. And when shall I be avenged?”
“Tomorrow . . . immediately . . . when you please. . . .”
About to cry out “Immediately!” Milady checked herself, reflecting that such precipitation was scarcely flattering to D’Artagnan. Besides she had a thousand precautions to take and a thousand counsels to give her champion for he must avoid any argument with de Vardes in the presence of witnesses. Her anxiety was dispelled by D’Artagnan’s promise:
“Tomorrow you will be avenged or I shall be dead.”
“No, you will avenge me and you will not die because he is a coward.”
“A coward with women, perhaps, but not with men; remember, I know something of him.”
“And yet in your bout with him, it seems to me fortune smiled on you.”
“Fortune is a harlot; favorable to a man yesterday, she may turn her back on him tomorrow.”
“Which means that you are beginning to waver?”
“God forbid! But would it be just to send me to a possible death without granting me something more tangible than merely hope?”
Milady answered with a glance which he interpreted as a belittling of the favor and an encouragement to speak out. Then she capped her glance with four tender words of explanation:
“That is only equitable!”
“Oh, you are an angel!” he cried triumphantly.
“Then all is agreed?”
“All save what I ask of you, sweet love.”
“But I have assured you that you can rely upon my tenderness.”
“I cannot wait until tomorrow.”
“Hush, I hear my brother. There is no point in his finding you here.”
She rang the bell and Kitty appeared.
“Go out this way,” she ordered, opening a small secret door, “and come back at eleven. We will then conclude our conversation. Kitty will show you to my apartment.”
The unhappy soubrette almost fainted at these words.
“Well, Mademoiselle, what are you doing, standing there like a statue? Come, show the Chevalier out at once. And this evening at eleven—you heard what I said.”
(“Apparently all her appointments are set at eleven o’clock,” D’Artagnan thought. “It is a settled custom, a sort of tradition!”)
Milady held out her hand. Bowing, he kissed it tenderly.
(“Now D’Artagnan,” he told himself as he retreated with utmost speed from Kitty’s reproaches, “you must not play the fool. This woman is undoubtedly an unparalleled criminal. You must take the utmost care!”)
XXXVII
MILADY’S SECRET