“Believe me, sir. I fully appreciate the honor you do me; but I am no
longer free”--
“I beseech you”--
“Freely, and among all men, I have chosen M. Daniel Champcey. My life is
in his hands.”
He tottered as if he had received a heavy blow, and stammered with a
half-extinct voice,--
“Will you not leave me a glimpse of hope?”
“I would do wrong if I did so, sir, and I have never yet deceived any
one.”
But the Hon. M. Elgin was not one of those men who despair easily, and
give up. He was not discouraged by a first failure; and he showed it
very soon. The very next day he became a changed man, as if Henrietta’s
refusal had withered the very roots of his life. In his carriage, his
gestures, and his tone of voice, he betrayed the utmost dejection. He
looked as if he had grown taller and thinner. A bitter smile curled on
his lips; and his magnificent whiskers, usually so admirably kept, now
hung down miserably on his chest. And this intense melancholy grew and
grew, till it became so evident to all the world, that people asked the
countess,--
“What is the matter with poor M. Elgin? He looks funereal.”
“He is unhappy,” was the answer, accompanied by a sigh, which sounded
as if it had been uttered in order to increase curiosity, and stimulate
people to observe him more closely. Several persons did observe him; and
they soon found out that Sir Thorn no longer took his seat by Henrietta
as formerly, and that he avoided every occasion to address her a word.
For all that he was not resigned; far from that. He only laid siege from
a distance now, spending whole evenings in looking at her from afar,
absorbed in mute ecstasy. And at all times, incessantly and everywhere,
she met him, as if he had been her shadow, or as if he had been
condemned to breathe the air which had been displaced by her petticoats.
One would have thought him endowed with the gift of multiplying himself;
for he was inevitably seen wherever she was,--leaning against the
door-frame, or resting his elbow on the mantlepiece, his eyes fixed upon
her. And, when she did not see him, she felt his looks still weighing
her down. M. de Brevan, having been made aware of his importunate
attentions, seemed to check his indignation only with great difficulty.
Once or twice he spoke of calling out this wretched fellow (so he called
Sir Thorn); and, in order to quiet him, Henrietta had to repeat to him
over and over again, that, after such an encounter, he would no longer
be able to appear at the palace, and would thus deprive her of the only
friend to whom she could look for assistance.