“You ask me for your horoscope? Be it so. Have you a large fortune?”
“About fifty thousand dollars.”
“Well, in six months they will be gone; in a year you will be
overwhelmed with debts, and at your wits’ end; in less than a year and a
half, you will have become a forger.”
“Maxime!”
“Ah! You asked me to tell you the truth. Then, as to your social
position. Now it is excellent; you have been promoted as rapidly as
merit could claim, everybody says. You will be an admiral one of these
days. But in six months you will be nothing at all; you will have
resigned your commission, or you will have been dismissed.”
“Allow me”--
“No. You are an honest man, the most honorable man I know; after six
months’ acquaintance with Sarah Brandon, you will have lost your self-
respect so completely, that you will have become a drunkard. There is
your picture. ‘It’s not flattered!’ you will say. But you wanted to have
it. And now let us go.”
This time he was determined; and Daniel saw that he would not obtain
another word from him, unless he changed his tactics. He held him back,
therefore, a moment; and, as he opened the door, he said,--
“Maxime, you must pardon me a very innocent deception, which was
suggested by your own words. It is not I who am in love with Miss Sarah
Brandon.”
Brevan was so much surprised, he could not stir.
“Who is it, then?” he asked.
“One of my friends.”
“What name?”
“I wish you would render the service I ask of you doubly valuable by not
asking me that question,--at least, not to-day.”
Daniel spoke with such an accent of truth, that not a shadow of doubt
remained on Maxime’s mind. It was not Daniel who had fallen in love with
Sarah Brandon. Brevan did not doubt that for a moment. But he could not
conceal his trouble, and his disappointment even, as he exclaimed,--
“Well done, Daniel! Tell me that your ingenuous people cannot deceive
anybody!”
However, he said nothing more about it; and, while Daniel was pouring
out his excuses, he quietly went back to the fire, and sat down. After a
moment’s silence, he began again,--
“Let us assume, then, that it is one of your friends who is bewitched?”
“Yes.”
“And the matter is--serious?”
“Alas! He talks of marrying that woman.”