I will not cast you out. I will not."
I stood looking at them, bewildered and astonished by Mademoiselle's
loyalty. She seemed to have forgotten Nick, as had I, and then as I
turned to him he came towards them. Almost roughly he took Antoinette by
the arm.
"You do not know what you are saying," he cried. "Come away, Antoinette,
you do not know what she has done--you cannot realize what she is."
Antoinette shrank away from him, still clinging to Mrs. Temple. There
was a fearless directness in her look which might have warned him.
"She is your mother," she said quietly.
"My mother!" he repeated; "yes, I will tell you what a mother she has
been to me--"
"Nick!"
It passes my power to write down the pity of that appeal, the
hopelessness of it, the yearning in it. Freeing herself from the girl,
Mrs. Temple took one step towards him, her arms held up. I had not
thought that his hatred of her was deep enough to resist it. It was
Antoinette whose intuition divined this ere he had turned away.
"You have chosen between me and her," he said; and before we could get
the poor lady to the seat under the oak, he had left the garden. In my
perturbation I glanced at Antoinette, but there was no other sign in her
face save of tenderness for Mrs. Temple.
Mrs. Temple had mercifully fainted.
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