He stood still, for he knew that she would never allow him to kiss her hand in farewell, and he had had enough of insults--he knew that he could not bear that final one.
A red mist suddenly gathered before his eyes, a mad desire to strike, to wound or to kill, and with it a wave of passion--he called it Love--for this woman, such as he had never felt for her before. He gave her back with a glance, hatred for hatred, but whereas her hatred for him was smothered in contempt, his for her was leavened with a fierce and dominant passion.
All this had taken but a few seconds in accomplishment. M. le Comte had not done more than give a sign to Hector to see M. de Marmont safely out of the castle, and Maurice de St. Genis had only had time to think of interposing, if de Marmont tried to take Crystal's hand.
Only a few seconds, but a lifetime of emotion was crammed into them. Then de Marmont, with Crystal's look of loathing still eating into his soul, caught sight of Clyffurde who stood close by--Clyffurde whose one thought throughout all this unhappy scene had been of Crystal, who through it all had eyes and ears only for her.
Some kind of instinct made the young girl look up to him just then: probably only in response to a wave of memory which brought back to her at that very moment, the words of devotion and offer of service which he had spoken awhile ago; or it may have been that same sense which had told her at the time that here was a man whom she could always trust, that he would always prove a friend, as he had promised, and the look which she gave him was one of simple confidence.
But de Marmont just happened to intercept that look. He had never been jealous of Clyffurde of course. Clyffurde--the foreigner, the bourgeois tradesman--never could under any circumstances be a rival to reckon with. At any other time he would have laughed at the idea of Mlle. Crystal de Cambray bestowing the slightest favour upon the Englishman. But within the last few seconds everything had become different. Victor de Marmont, the triumphant and wealthy suitor of Mlle. de Cambray, had become a pariah among all these ladies and gentlemen, and he had become a man scorned by the woman whom he had wooed and thought to win so easily.