were lovely, though short in duration, and M. de la Tourelle had
occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate the superintendence
of which so frequently took him away from home. He took Lefebvre with
him, and possibly some more of the lacqueys; he often did. And my
spirits rose a little at the thought of his absence; and then the new
sensation that he was the father of my unborn babe came over me, and I
tried to invest him with this fresh character. I tried to believe that
it was his passionate love for me that made him so jealous and
tyrannical, imposing, as he did, restrictions on my very intercourse
with my dear father, from whom I was so entirely separated, as far as
personal intercourse was concerned.

I had, it is true, let myself go into a sorrowful review of all the
troubles which lay hidden beneath the seeming luxury of my life. I knew
that no one cared for me except my husband and Amante; for it was clear
enough to see that I, as his wife, and also as a _parvenue_, was not
popular among the few neighbours who surrounded us; and as for the
servants, the women were all hard and impudent-looking, treating me
with a semblance of respect that had more of mockery than reality in
it; while the men had a lurking kind of fierceness about them, sometimes
displayed even to M. de la Tourelle, who on his part, it must be confessed,
was often severe even to cruelty in his management of them. My husband
loved me, I said to myself, but I said it almost in the form of a
question. His love was shown fitfully, and more in ways calculated to
please himself than to please me. I felt that for no wish of mine would
he deviate one tittle from any predetermined course of action. I had
learnt the inflexibility of those thin, delicate lips; I knew how anger
would turn his fair complexion to deadly white, and bring the cruel
light into his pale blue eyes. The love I bore to any one seemed to be
a reason for his hating them, and so I went on pitying myself one long
dreary afternoon during that absence of his of which I have spoken, only
sometimes remembering to check myself in my murmurings by thinking of
the new unseen link between us, and then crying afresh to think how
wicked I was. Oh, how well I remember that long October evening! Amante
came in from time to time, talking away to cheer me--talking about dress
and Paris, and I hardly know what, but from time to time looking at me
keenly with her friendly dark eyes, and with ser