He gave a low musical laugh. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said, “but really your words amuse me. ‘A disinterested villain!’ Believe me, when I tell you that disinterested villainy is as great an impossibility as disinterested virtue. You are mistaken, mademoiselle, but only as to the nature of the reward I come to claim. You would confine the question to one of money. Cannot you imagine that I have acted in the hope of a higher reward than any recompense your banker’s book could afford me?”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, but his face was hidden. He was trifling with his light riding-whip, and looking down at the hearth. After a minute’s pause he lifted his head, and glanced at her with the same dangerous smile.
“You cannot guess, then, mademoiselle, the price I claim for my services yonder?” he asked.
“No.”
“Nay, mademoiselle, reflect.”
“It would be useless. I might anticipate your claiming half my fortune, as I am, in a manner, in your power—”
“Oh, yes,” he murmured softly, interrupting her, “you are, in a manner, in my power certainly.”
“But the possibility of your claiming from me anything except money has never for a moment occurred to me.”
“Mademoiselle, when first I saw you I looked at you through an opera-glass from my place in the stalls of the Italian Opera. The glass, mademoiselle, was an excellent one, for it revealed every line and every change in your beautiful face. From my observation of that face I made two or three conclusions about your character, which I now find were not made upon false premises. You are impulsive, mademoiselle, but you are not farseeing. You are strong in your resolutions when once your mind is fixed; but that mind is easily influenced by others. You have passion, genius, courage—rare and beautiful gifts which distinguish you from the rest of womankind; but you have not that power of calculation, that inductive science, which never sees the effect without looking for the cause, which men have christened mathematics. I, mademoiselle, am a mathematician. As such, I sat down to play a deep and dangerous game with you; and as such, now that the hour has come at which I can show my hand, you will see that I hold the winning cards.”
“I cannot understand, monsieur—”
“Perhaps not, yet. When you first honoured me with an interview you were pleased to call me ‘an adventurer.’ You used the expression as a term of reproach. Strange to say, I never held it in that light. When it pleased Heaven, or Fate—whichever name you please to give the abstraction—to throw me out upon a world with which my life has been one long war, it pleased that Power to give me nothing but my brains for weapons in the great fight. No rank, no rent-roll, neither mother nor father, friend nor patron. All to win, and nothing to lose. How much I had won when I first saw you it would be hard for you, born in those great saloons to which I have struggled from the mire of the streets—it would be very hard, I say, for you to guess. I entered Paris one year ago, possessed of a sum of money which to me was wealth, but which might, perhaps, to you, be a month’s income. I had only one object—to multiply that sum a hundredfold. I became, therefore, a speculator, or, as you call it, ‘an adventurer.’ As a speculator, I took my seat in the stalls of the Opera House the night I first saw you.”
She looked at him in utter bewilderment, as he sat in his most careless attitude, playing with the gold handle of his riding-whip, but she did not attempt to speak, and he continued—
“I happened to hear from a bystander that you were the richest woman in France. Do you know, mademoiselle, how an adventurer, with a tolerably handsome face and a sufficiently gentlemanly address, generally calculates on enriching himself? Or, if you do not know, can you guess?”
“No,” she muttered, looking at him now as if she were in a trance, and he had some strange magnetic power over her.
“Then, mademoiselle, I must enlighten you. The adventurer who does not care to grow grey and decrepit in making a fortune by that slow and uncertain mode which people call ‘honest industry,’ looks about him for a fortune ready made and waiting for him to claim it. He makes a wealthy marriage.”
“A wealthy marriage?” She repeated the words after him, as if mechanically.
“Therefore, mademoiselle, on seeing you, and on hearing the extent of your fortune, I said to myself, ‘That is the woman I must marry!’ ”
“Monsieur!” She started indignantly from her reclining attitude; but the effort was too much for her shattered frame, and she sank back exhausted.
“Nay, mademoiselle, I did not say ‘That is the woman I will marry,’ but rather, ‘That is the woman I must try to marry;’ for as yet, remember, I did not hold one card in the great game I had to play. I raised my glass, and looked long at your face. A very beautiful face, mademoiselle, as you and your glass have long decided between you. I was—pardon me—disappointed. Had you been an ugly woman, my chances would have been so much better. Had you been disfigured by a hump—(if it had been but the faintest elevation of one white shoulder, prouder, perhaps, than its fellow)—had your hair been tinged with even a suspicion of the ardent hue which prejudice condemns, it would have been a wonderful advantage to me. Vain hope to win you by flattery, when even the truth must sound like flattery. And then, again, one glance told me that you were no pretty simpleton, to be won by a stratagem, or bewildered by romantic speeches. And yet, mademoiselle, I did not despair. You were beautiful; you were impassioned. In
