not to be indifferent to each other?" replied the marquise.
"Have we not, each of us, another, and a binding attachment?"

"Oh!" cried Calyste, "if you mean Camille, I did love her, but I love
her no longer."

"Then why are you shut up together every morning?" she said, with
a treacherous smile. "I don't suppose that Camille, in spite of her
passion for tobacco, prefers her cigar to you, or that you, in your
admiration for female authors, spend four hours a day in reading their
romances."

"So then you know--" began the guileless young Breton, his face glowing
with the happiness of being face to face with his idol.

"Calyste!" cried Camille, angrily, suddenly appearing and interrupting
him. She took his arm and drew him away to some distance. "Calyste, is
this what you promised me?"

Beatrix heard these words of reproach as Mademoiselle des Touches
disappeared toward the house, taking Calyste with her. She was stupefied
by the young man's assertion, and could not comprehend it; she was not
as strong as Claude Vignon. In truth, the part being played by Camille
Maupin, as shocking as it was grand, is one of those wicked grandeurs
which women only practise when driven to extremity. By it their hearts
are broken; in it the feelings of their sex are lost to them; it begins
an abnegation which ends by either plunging them to hell, or lifting
them to heaven.

During breakfast, which Calyste was invited to share, the marquise,
whose sentiments could be noble and generous, made a sudden return upon
herself, resolving to stifle the germs of love which were rising in
her heart. She was neither cold nor hard to Calyste, but gently
indifferent,--a course which tortured him. Felicite brought forward a
proposition that they should make, on the next day but one, an excursion
into the curious and interesting country lying between Les Touches,
Croisic, and the village of Batz. She begged Calyste to employ himself
on the morrow in hiring a boat and sailors to take them across the
little bay, undertaking herself to provide horses and provisions, and
all else that was necessary for a party of pleasure, in which there was
to be no fatigue. Beatrix stopped the matter short, however, by saying
that she did not wish to make excursions round the country. Calyste's
face, which had beamed with delight at the prospect, was suddenly
overclouded.

"What are you afraid of, my dear?" asked Camille.

"My position is so delicate I do not wish t