New enemies you will have perchance, but in your
strife with them I could lend you no help, were I by."
He sat in silence casting pebbles into the stream, and watching the ripples
they made upon the face of the waters.
"Have you told Mademoiselle?" he asked at length.
"Not yet. I shall tell her to-day. You also, Andrea, must take her into
your confidence touching your approaching marriage. That she will prove a
good friend to you I am assured."
"But what reason shall I give form my secrecy?" he inquired, and inwardly I
smiled to see how the selfishness which love begets in us had caused him
already to forget my affairs, and how the thought of his own approaching
union effaced all thought of me and the doom to which I went.
"Give no reason," I answered. "Let Genevieve tell her of what you
contemplate, and if a reason she must have, let Genevi?ve bid her come to
me. This much will I do for you in the matter; indeed, Andrea, it is the
last service I am like to render you."
"Sh! Here comes the Chevalier. She shall be told to-day."
CHAPTER XVI
THE WAY OF WOMAN
For all that I realised that this love of mine for Yvonne was as a child
still-born--a thing that had no existence save in the heart that had
begotten it--I rejoiced meanly at the thought that she was not destined to
become Andrea's wife.
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