"Confound it!" thought Armand de Montriveau, "how am I to tell
this wild thing that I love her?"

He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess
had a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion
in this unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an
interest in her empty life. So she prepared with no little
dexterity to raise a certain number of redoubts for him to carry
by storm before he should gain an entrance into her heart.
Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after another; he
should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect teased
by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its
mischievous tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible
happiness to see that this strong man had told her the truth.
Armand had never loved, as he had said. He was about to go, in a
bad humour with himself, and still more out of humour with her;
but it delighted her to see a sullenness that she could conjure
away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.

"Will you come tomorrow evening?" she asked. "I am going to a
ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock."

Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the
hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To
anyone who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would
have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of
himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered
worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she-coxcomb's boudoir.