She was not at all unwilling that Cathelineau's mother should know the
feeling which she had entertained for her son, but the abruptness, and
the tone of the question, took her by surprise, and for a moment
scattered her thoughts.
"Now I have made you angry, Mademoiselle," said the other, chuckling at
the success of her scheme. "Now you are wrath that I should have dared
to suppose that the daughter of a Marquis could have looked, in the way
of love, on a poor labourer who had been born and bred in a hovel like
this."
"You mistake me, my friend; I am not angry--I am anything but angry."
"You would have scorned him as a loathsome reptile, which to touch would
be an abomination," continued the old woman, not noticing, in her
eagerness, Agatha's denial. "You would have run from him in disgust, and
the servants would have let loose the dogs at him, or have chained him
as a madman. Yes, your delicate frame shakes with horror at the idea,
that a filthy stable boy could have looked on your beauty, and have
dared to wish to possess it: and yet you presume to tell me that
Cathelineau was among you as an equal: he was with you as a Jew is among
Christians, as a slobbering drunkard among sober men, as one stricken
with fever among the healthy.
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