en so many feelings were contending in his breast.
Calyste was in ecstasy. As Conti sang the first words of the cavatina,
he looked intently at the marquise, giving to those words a cruel
signification which was fully understood. Camille, who accompanied him,
guessed the order thus conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless
Beatrix. She looked at Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen
into some trap in spite of her advice. This conviction became certainty
when the evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night,
kissing her hand, and pressing it with a little air of happy confidence.

By the time Calyste had reached Guerande, the servants were packing
Conti's travelling-carriage, and "by dawn," as the song had said, the
composer was carrying Beatrix away with Camille's horses to the first
relay. The morning twilight enabled Madame de Rochefide to see Guerande,
its towers, whitened by the dawn, shining out upon the still dark sky.
Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one of the
sweetest flowers of all her life,--a pure love, such as a young girl
dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to conceive
of. The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she sacrificed
love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to religion or
to duty. Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as virtue. Read
thus, this history is that of many women.

The next morning Calyste went to Les Touches about mid-day. When
he reached the spot from which, the day before, he had seen Beatrix
watching for him at the window, he saw Camille, who instantly ran down
to him. She met him at the foot of the staircase and told the cruel
truth in one word,--

"Gone!"

"Beatrix?" asked Calyste, thunderstruck.

"You have been duped by Conti; you told me nothing, and I could do
nothing for you."

She led the poor fellow to her little salon, where he flung himself on
the divan where he had so often seen the marquise, and burst into tears.
Felicite smoked her hookah and said nothing, knowing well that no words
or thoughts are capable of arresting the first anguish of such pain,
which is always deaf and dumb. Calyste, unable even to think, much less
to choose a course, sat there all day in a state of complete torpidity.
Just before dinner was served, Camille tried to say a few words, after
begging him, very earnestly, to listen to her.

"Friend," she said, "you caused me the bitte