tude and
latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young corvette,
one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard the news of the marriage of
Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young Countess
gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no doubt,
found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury was ineffectual to
disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul; for the most
part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gaiety, her beautiful face
expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared, however, full of
attentions and consideration for her old husband, who, on retiring to
his rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively band, would often say, "I
do not know myself. Was I to wait till the age of seventy-two to embark
as pilot on board the Belle Emilie after twenty years of matrimonial
galleys?"

The conduct of the young Countess was marked by such strictness that the
most clear-sighted criticism had no fault to find with her. Lookers on
chose to think that the vice-admiral had reserved the right of disposing
of his fortune to keep his wife more tightly in hand; but this was a
notion as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their conduct was
indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most interested in
guessing the secrets of the couple could never decide whether the old
Count regarded her as a wife or as a daughter. He was often heard to say
that he had rescued his niece as a castaway after shipwreck; and that,
for his part, he had never taken a mean advantage of hospitality when
he had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm. Though the Countess
aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace with Mesdames the
Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and du Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard and
d'Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, de Montcornet, and de Restaud,
Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches, she did not yield to the
addresses of the young Vicomte de Portenduere, who made her his idol.

Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing-rooms in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was admired for her character, worthy
of the old school, Emilie heard the Vicomte de Longueville announced.
In the corner of the room where she was sitting, playing piquet with
the Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed; she turned her
head and saw her former lover come in, in all the freshness of youth.
His father's death, and then that of his brother, killed