Diane looked at the tender petitioner; then she lowered her eyes
slowly, dropping their lids with a movement of noble modesty. None but
a monster would have been capable of imagining hypocrisy in the
graceful undulation of the neck with which the princess again lifted
her charming head, to look once more into the eager eyes of that great
man.

"Can I? ought I?" she murmured, with a gesture of hesitation, gazing
at d'Arthez with a sublime expression of dreamy tenderness. "Men have
so little faith in things of this kind; they think themselves so
little bound to be discreet!"

"Ah! if you distrust me, why am I here?" cried d'Arthez.

"Oh, friend!" she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an
involuntary avowal, "when a woman attaches herself for life, think you
she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you
anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I
would willingly confide to you the strange position in which I am at
my age; but what would you think of a woman who could reveal the
secret wounds of her married life? Turenne kept his word to robbers;
do I not owe to my torturers the honor of a Turenne?"

"Have you passed your word to say nothing?"

"Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary to bind me to
secrecy-- You are asking more than my soul! Tyrant! you want me to
bury my honor itself in your breast," she said, casting upon d'Arthez
a look, by which she gave more value to her coming confidence than to