so was I, for I did not hear him
go away; apparently he remained at the foot of the elm. After a good
quarter of an hour, during which I lost myself in contemplation of the
heavens, and battled with the waves of curiosity, I closed my widow and
sat down on the bed to unfold the delicate bit of paper, with the tender
touch of a worker amongst the ancient manuscripts at Naples. It felt
redhot to my fingers. "What a horrible power this man has over me!" I
said to myself.

All at once I held out the paper to the candle--I would burn it without
reading a word. Then a thought stayed me, "What can he have to say that
he writes so secretly?" Well, dear, I _did_ burn it, reflecting that,
though any other girl in the world would have devoured the letter, it
was not fitting that I--Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu--should read
it.

The next day, at the Italian opera, he was at his post. But I feel sure
that, ex-prime minister of a constitutional government though he is, he
could not discover the slightest agitation of mind in any movement of
mine. I might have seen nothing and received nothing the evening before.
This was most satisfactory to me, but he looked very sad. Poor man! in
Spain it is so natural for love to come in at the window!

During the interval, it seems, he came and walked in the passages. This
I learned from the chief secretary of the Spanish embassy, who also told
the story of a noble action of his.

As Duc de Soria he was to marry one of the richest heiresses in Spain,
the young princess Marie Heredia, whose wealth would have mitigated the
bitterness of exile. But it seems that Marie, disappointing the wishes
of the fathers, who had betrothed them in their earliest childhood,
loved the younger son of the house of Soria, to whom my Felipe, gave her
up. Allowing himself to be despoiled by the King of Spain.

"He would perform this piece of heroism quite simply," I said to the
young man.

"You know him then?" was his ingenuous reply.

My mother smiled.

"What will become of him, for he is condemned to death?" I asked.

"Though dead to Spain, he can live in Sardinia."

"Ah! then Spain is the country of tombs as well as castles?" I said,
trying to carry it off as a joke.

"There is everything in Spain, even Spaniards of the old school," my
mother replied.

"The Baron de Macumer obtained a passport, not without difficulty, from
the King of Sardinia," the young diplomatist went on. "He has now become