He spoke with difficulty in broken sentences, without turning his eyes
toward Mademoiselle Vincart. The silence that followed his last question
seemed to him unbearable, and the contrasting chirping of the noisy
grasshoppers, and the buzzing of the flies in the quiet sunny garden,
resounded unpleasantly in his ears.

Reine remained speechless. She was disconcerted and well-nigh
overpowered by the unexpected announcement, and her brain seemed unable
to bear the crowd of tumultuous and conflicting emotions which presented
themselves. Certainly, she had already suspected that Claudet had a
secret liking for her, but she never had thought of encouraging the
feeling. The avowal of his hopes neither surprised nor hurt her; that
which pained her was the intervention of Julien, who had taken in hand
the cause of his relative. Was it possible that this same M. de
Buxieres, who had made so audacious a display of his tender feeling in
the hut, could now come forward as Claudet's advocate, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world for him to do? In that case, his
astonishing behavior at the fete, which had caused her so much pain,
and which she had endeavored to excuse in her own mind as the untutored
outbreak of his pentup love, that fiery caress, was only the insulting
manifestation of a brutal caprice? The transgressor thought so little of
her, she was of such small importance in his eyes, that he had no
hesitation in proposing that she marry Claudet? She beheld herself
scorned, humiliated, insulted by the only man in whom she ever had felt
interested. In the excess of her indignation she felt herself becoming
hardhearted and violent; a profound discouragement, a stony indifference
to all things, impelled her to extreme measures, and, not being able at
the moment to find any one on whom she could put them in operation, she
was almost tempted to lay violent hands on herself.