“Be comforted, dear Isabelle,” said he at last, tenderly.  “I was not killed you see, nor even hurt; and I actually wounded my adversary, though he does pass for a tolerably good swordsman hereabouts, I believe.”

“Yes, I well know what a strong hand is yours, and what a brave, noble heart,” Isabelle replied; “and I do not scruple to acknowledge that I love you for it with all my heart; feeling sure that you will respect my frank avowal, and not endeavour to take advantage of it.  When I first saw you, de Sigognac, dispirited and desolate, in that dreary, half-ruined chateau, where your youth was passing in sadness and solitude, I felt a tender interest in you suddenly spring into being in my heart; had you been happy and prosperous I should have been afraid of you, and have shrunk timidly from your notice.  When we walked together in that neglected garden, where you held aside the brambles so carefully for me to pass unscathed, you gathered and presented to me a little wild rose—­the only thing you had to give me.  As I raised it to my lips, before putting it in my bosom, and kissed it furtively under pretence of inhaling its fragrance, I could not keep back a tear that dropped upon it, and secretly and in silence I gave you my heart in exchange for it.”

As these entrancing words fell upon his ear, de Sigognac impulsively tried to kiss the sweet lips so temptingly near his own, but Isabelle withdrew herself gently from his embrace; not with any show of excessive prudery, but with a modest timidity that no really gallant lover would endeavour to overcome by force.

“Yes, I love you, de Sigognac,” she continued, in a voice that was heavenly sweet, “and with all my heart, but not as other women love; your glory is my aim, not my own pleasure.  I am perfectly willing to be looked upon as your mistress; it is the only thing that would account satisfactorily to the world at large for your presence in this troupe of strolling players.  And why should I care for slanderous reports, so long as I keep my own self-esteem, and know myself to be virtuous and true?  If there were really a stain upon my purity it would kill me; I could not survive it.  It is the princely blood in my veins doubtless that gives rise to such pride in me; very ridiculous, perhaps, in an actress, but such is my nature.”

This enchanting avowal, which would not have taught anything new to a more conceited or bolder suitor, but was a wonderful revelation to de Sigognac, who had scarcely dared to hope that his passionate, devoted love might some day be returned, filled him with such rapturous, overwhelming delight, that he was almost beside himself.  A burning flush overspread his usually pale face; he seemed to see flames before his eyes; there was a strange ringing in his ears, and his heart throbbed so violently that he felt half suffocated.  Losing control of himself in this moment of ecstasy, so intense that it was not unmixed with pain, he suddenly seized Isabelle passionately