some noble
count who intended to make another stage of his journey before
nightfall.

Small obtrusive cares, such as the desire that my shoes should last well
into Paris, mingled with joy in the smell of the earth at sunset, and
the looking forward to seeing Madame de Ferrier again. I wrapped myself
every night in the conviction that I should see her, and more freely
than I had ever seen her in America.

There was a noise of horses galloping, and the expected noble count
arrived; being no other than De Chaumont with his post coaches. He
stepped out of the first, and Ernestine stepped out of the second,
carrying Paul. She took him to his mother. The door flew open, and the
woman I adored received her child and walked back and forth with him.
Annabel leaned out while the horses were changed. I saw Miss Chantry,
and my heart misgave me, remembering her brother's prolonged lament at
separation from her.

He was, I trusted, already shut into one of those public beds which are
like cupboards; for the day had begun for us at three of the morning.
But if he chose to show himself, and fall upon De Chaumont for luxurious
conveyance to Paris, I was determined that Skenedonk and I should not
appear. I wronged my poor master, who told me afterwards he watched
through a crack of the cupboard bed with his heart in his mouth.

The pause was a very short one, for horses are soon changed. Madame de
Ferrier threw a searching eye over the landscape. It was a mercy she did
not see the hole in the grenier, through which I devoured her, daring
for the first time to call her secretly--Eagle--the name that De
Chaumont used with common freedom! Now how strange is this--that one
woman should be to a man the sum of things! And what was her charm I
could not tell, for I began to understand there were many beautiful
women in the world, of all favors, and shapely perhaps as the one of my
love. Only her I found drawing the soul out of my body; and none of the
others did more than please the eye like pictures.

The carriages were gone with the sun, and it was no wonder all fell gray
over the world.

De Chaumont had sailed behind us, and he would be in Paris long before
us.

I had first felt some uneasiness, and dread of being arrested on our
journey; though our Breton captain--who was a man of gold that I would
travel far to see this day, if I could, even beneath the Atlantic, where
he and his ship now float--obtained for us at Dieppe, on his