he azure of her eyes, and softened the lines
about them, has furrowed the warm ivory of her temples, and cast a
sallow tinge over the beautiful face.

Before replying, I kissed her hands.

"Dear aunt," I said, "I shall never forget your kindness; and if it has
not made your nunnery all that it ought to be for my health of body and
soul, you may be sure nothing short of a broken heart will bring me
back again--and that you would not wish for me. You will not see me
here again till my royal lover has deserted me, and I warn you that if I
catch him, death alone shall tear him from me. I fear no Montespan."

She smiled and said:

"Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you. There is certainly
more of the bold Montespan in you than of the gentle la Valliere."

I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could not refrain from
escorting me to the carriage. There her tender gaze was divided between
me and the armorial bearings.

At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in a stupor of the mind
produced by these strange parting words. What can be awaiting me in this
world for which I have so hungered?

To begin with, I found no one to receive me; my heart had been schooled
in vain. My mother was at the Bois de Boulogne, my father at the
Council; my brother, the Duc de Rhetore, never comes in, I am told,
till it is time to dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not unlike a
griffin) and Philippe took me to my rooms.

The suite is the one which belonged to my beloved grandmother, the
Princess de Vauremont, to whom I owe some sort of a fortune which no
one has ever told me about. As you read this, you will understand
the sadness which came over me as I entered a place sacred to so many
memories, and found the rooms just as she had left them! I was to sleep
in the bed where she died.

Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, I burst into tears, forgetting I
was not alone, and remembering only how often I had stood there by her
knees, the better to hear her words. There I had gazed upon her face,
buried in its brown laces, and worn as much by age as by the pangs of
approaching death. The room seemed to me still warm with the heat which
she kept up there. How comes it that Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu
must be like some peasant girl, who sleeps in her mother's bed the very
morrow of her death? For to me it was as though the Princess, who died
in 1817, had passed away but yesterday.

I saw many things in the room which