She was horrified at her position.
"What have you done with my letters?" she said at last.
"What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought Julien. "The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's diligence is taking far away from here."
He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be heard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.
"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination as the first."
"Heavens, why all these precautions?" said Mathilde in alarm.
"What is the good of my lying?" thought Julien, and he confessed all his suspicions.
"So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear," exclaimed Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.
Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his arms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect.
He was only partially rebuffed.
He fell back on his memory as he had once at Besancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest phrases out of the Nouvelle Heloise.
"You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made without listening too attentively to his phrases;
"I wanted to test your courage, I confess it.
Your first suspicions and your resolutions show you even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed."
Mathilde had to make an effort to call him "dear," and was evidently paying more attention to this strange method of speech than to the substance of what she was saying.
Being called "dear" without any tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was astonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his reasoning in order to be so.
He saw that he was respected by this proud young girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning he managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity.
It was not, it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with madame de Renal.
There was no element of tenderness in the feelings of these first few minutes.
It was the keen happiness of a gratified ambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious.
He talked again of the people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had devised.
As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his victory.
Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic of conversation.
They talked of how they were to see each other again.
Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of the intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself possessed during this discussion.
They had to reckon with extremely sharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and himself as well had their share of cleverness.
What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all arrangements?
"I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien, "without rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room."
It was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her daughter's room.
If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to come by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger with a heart intoxicated with joy.
As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of triumph.
"So he is my master," she said to herself, she was already a prey to remorse.
Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she had just committed.
If she had had the power she would have annihilated both herself and Julien.
When for a few moments she managed by sheer will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame.
She had quite failed to foresee the awful plight in which she now found herself.
"I must speak to him, however," she said at last. "That is the proper thing to do. One does talk to one's lover."
And then with a view of accomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather in the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice, she recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him during the last few days.
She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help of the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be entirely his.
But never were such tender passages spoken in a more polite and frigid tone.
Up to the present this assignation had been icy.
It was enough to make one hate the name of love.
What a lesson in morality for a young and imprudent girl!
Is it worth while to ruin one's future for moments such as this?
After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so firm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.
In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial.
Passionate love was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.
Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards herself and towards her lover.
"The poor boy," she said to herself, "has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is really I who will be shewing a lack of character."
But she would have been glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found herself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.