plendid trappings of the nobility of the sword to wear the sterner
costume of the magistracy.

"I like you better in black," she said.

It was a falsehood, but by that falsehood she comforted her lover for
having thrown his dagger to the winds. The memory of the little schemes
employed to deceive her mother, whose severity seemed great, brought
back to her the soulful joys of that innocent and mutual and sanctioned
love; sometimes a rendezvous beneath the linden, where speech could
be freer than before witnesses; sometimes a furtive clasp, or a stolen
kiss,--in short, all the naive instalments of a passion that did not
pass the bounds of modesty. Reliving in her vision those delightful days
when she seemed to have too much happiness, she fancied that she kissed,
in the void, that fine young face with the glowing eyes, that rosy
mouth that spoke so well of love. Yes, she had loved Chaverny, poor
apparently; but what treasures had she not discovered in that soul as
tender as it was strong!

Suddenly her father died. Chaverny did not succeed him. The flames
of civil war burst forth. By Chaverny's care she and her mother found
refuge in a little town of Lower Normandy. Soon the deaths of other
relatives made her one of the richest heiresses in France. Happiness
disappeared as wealth came to her. The savage and terrible face of Comte
d'Herouville, who asked her hand, rose before her like a thunder-cloud,
spreading its gloom over the smiling meadows so lately gilded by the
sun. The poor countess strove to cast from her memory the scenes of
weeping and despair brought about by her long resistance.

At last came an awful night when her mother, pale and dying, threw
herself at her daughter's feet. Jeanne could save Chaverny's life by
yielding; she yielded. It was night. The count, arriving bloody from
the battlefield was there; all was ready, the priest, the altar, the
torches! Jeanne belonged henceforth to misery. Scarcely had she time to
say to her young cousin who was set at liberty:--

"Georges, if you love me, never see me again!"

She heard the departing steps of her lover, whom, in truth, she never
saw again; but in the depths of her heart she still kept sacred his last
look which returned perpetually in her dreams and illumined them. Living
like a cat shut into a lion's cage, the young wife dreaded at all hours
the claws of the master which ever threatened her. She knew that in
order to be happy she must forget the