"
"Ah, well!" rejoined the duke, with a malicious smile, "I will dispense
with hope, and content myself with reality. You do not know, my poor
child, what a Vallombreuse can do--you, who vainly try to resist him.
He has never yet known what it was to have an unsatisfied desire--he
invariably gains his ends, in spite of all opposition--nothing can stop
him. Tears, supplication, laments, threats, even dead bodies and smoking
ruins would not daunt him. Do not tempt him too powerfully, by throwing
new obstacles in his way, you imprudent child!"
Isabelle, frightened by the expression of his countenance as he spoke
thus, instinctively pushed her chair farther away from his, and felt for
Chiquita's knife. But the wily duke, seeing that he had made a mistake,
instantly changed his tone, and begging her pardon most humbly for his
vehemence, endeavoured to persuade her, by many specious arguments, that
she was wrong in persistently turning a deaf ear to his suit--setting
forth at length, and in glowing words, all the advantages that would
accrue to her if she would but yield to his wishes, and describing the
happiness in store for her. While he was thus eloquently pleading his
cause, Isabelle, who had given him only a divided attention, thought
that she heard a peculiar little noise in the direction whence the
longed-for aid was to come, and fearing that Vallombreuse might hear it
also, hastened to answer him the instant that he paused, in a way to vex
him still further--for she preferred his anger to his love-making.
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