Well as he knew the worth of madame's tears, Ernest, chivalric and generous at heart, was touched.
"Forgive me," he said, gently, "and let us part. You know now, Pauline, that she has my deepest, my latest love. It were disloyalty to both did we meet again save in society."
"Farewell, then," murmured Pauline. "Think gently of me, Ernest, for I _have_ loved you more than you will ever know now."
She rose, and, as he bent towards her, kissed his forehead. Then, floating from the room, passed the Reverend Eusebius, standing in the doorway, looking in on this parting scene. The widow looked at herself in her mirror that night with a smile of satisfaction.
"C'est bien en train," she said, half aloud. "Le fou! de penser qu'il puisse me braver. Je ne l'aime plus, c'est vrai, mais je ne veux pas qu'elle réussisse."
Nina went to bed very happy. Ernest had sat next her at the déjeûner; and afterwards at a ball had waltzed often with her and with nobody else; and his eyes had talked love in the waltzes though his tongue never had.
Ernest went to his chambers, smoked hard, half mad with the battle within him, and took three grains of opium, which gave him forgetfulness and sleep. He woke, tired and depressed, to hear the gay hum of life in the street below, and to remember he had promised Nina to meet them at Versailles.
It was Sunday morning. In England, of course, Gordon would have gone up to the sanctuary, listened to Mr. Bellew, frowned severely on the cheap trains, and, after his claret, read edifying sermons to his household; but in Paris there would be nobody to admire the piety, and the "grandes eaux" only play once a week, you know--on Sundays. So his Sabbath severity was relaxed, and down to Versailles he journied. There must be something peculiar in continental air, for it certainly stretches our countrymen's morality and religion uncommonly: it is only up at Jerusalem that our pharisees worship. Eusebius dare not go--he'd be sure to meet a brother-clerical, who might have reported the dereliction at home--so that Vaughan, despite Gordon's cold looks, kept by Nina's side though he wasn't alone with her, and when they came back in the _wagon_ the banker slept and the duenna dozed, and he talked softly and low to her--not quite love, but something very like it--and as they neared Paris he took the little hand with its delicate Jouvin glove in his, and whispered,