."

July 15th.

My dear, my love for Gaston is stronger than ever since that morning,
and he has every appearance of being still more deeply in love. He is
so young! A score of times it has been on my lips, when we rise in the
morning, to say, "Then you love me better than the lady of the Rue de
la Ville l'Eveque?" But I dare not explain to myself why the words are
checked on my tongue.

"Are you very fond of children?" I asked.

"Oh, yes!" was his reply; "but children will come!"

"What makes you think so?"

"I have consulted the best doctors, and they agree in advising me to
travel for a couple of months."

"Gaston," I said, "if love in absence had been possible for me, do you
suppose I should ever have left the convent?"

He laughed; but as for me, dear, the word "travel" pierced my heart.
Rather, far rather, would I leap from the top of the house than be
rolled down the staircase, step by step.--Farewell, my sweetheart. I
have arranged for my death to be easy and without horrors, but certain.
I made my will yesterday. You can come to me now, the prohibition is
removed. Come, then, and receive my last farewell. I will not die by
inches; my death, like my life, shall bear the impress of dignity and
grace.

Good-bye, dear sister soul, whose affection has never wavered nor grown
weary, but has been the constant tender moonlight of my soul. If the
intensity of passion has not been ours, at least we have been spared its
venomous bitterness. How rightly you have judged of life! Farewell.

LV. THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON July 16th.

My dear Louise,--I send this letter by an express before hastening
to the chalet myself. Take courage. Your last letter seemed to me so
frantic, that I thought myself justified, under the circumstances, in
confiding all to Louis; it was a question of saving you from yourself.
If the means we have employed have been, like yours, repulsive, yet the
result is so satisfactory that I am certain you will approve. I went so
far as to set the police to work, but the whole thing remains a secret
between the prefect, ourselves and you.

In one word, Gaston is a jewel! But here are the facts. His brother,
Louis Gaston, died at Calcutta, while in the service of a mercantile
company, when he was on the very point of returning to France, a rich,
prosperous, married man, having received a very large fortune with his
wife, who was the widow of an English merchant. For ten year