urpose, in the course of the morning. He then
bade good-day to his peasant dependent, and hoped he would see better
times, and do the best he could for the young people before their
wedding-day, as he would now have a considerable interval in which to
meditate his duty as a parent to so pretty a daughter.

While the Count was saying this, Casimir slipped round towards the door,
and, as Marie passed near him, thrust a piece of gold into her hand.
Marie had never had a piece of gold in her hand before, and she did not
like it now. She looked at Casimir with such a look as he had never
before met from human eyes, and threw his gift between his two dogs in
the window.

The Count did not see nor heed this. Randolphe thought his graver son
did; for there was a sudden crackle of the newspaper, and the reader's
face was crimson to the temples.

"We have one friend there, I fancy," muttered the unhappy father, as he
went out. "But for that, I think you and I had better drown ourselves
in the ponds between this and home."

"Charles!" gasped Marie in his ear. "Send Charles away! I can get home
alone."

Her father took the hint. They parted in the shade of the avenue, as
soon as they could suppose themselves unwatched from the chateau.
Randolphe cut across into the wood where he had seen Charles half an
hour before, while Marie went homewards with tottering steps, looking
away from the ponds, from a feeling that her state of mind was too
desperate for her to trust herself on the brink of deep waters.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FOUR.

HOLIDAY INDEED.

It was a comfort to Marie, on reaching home, to find that no soldiers
were there. The guests of the preceding night had been summoned to
their duty, as the royal train might be certainly expected in the course
of the morning. The good-natured Jerome's heart had been touched by the
lamentations of the boys for their lost favourites; and he had told them
that, if they would leave off crying, so as to make their faces fit to
be seen by the train of nobles, they might look out for him on the
roadside, and he would try to place them where they might see the
Dauphiness. They had made every effort to look cheerful, and were
thinking more about the Princess than of pigeons and rabbits when their
sister returned; but when they witnessed her burst of weeping on her
mother's bosom--when they heard that Charles was to be carried off for a
soldier for three years, and that there w