n was
being decorated, and she intended it for the home of Sabine and Calyste
if her plans succeeded.

The party had been invited to stay at the hotel de Grandlieu, where the
baroness was received with all the distinction due to her rank as the
wife of a du Guenic and the daughter of a British peer. Mademoiselle des
Touches urged Calyste to see Paris, while she herself made the necessary
inquiries about Beatrix (who had disappeared from the world, and was
travelling abroad), and she took care to throw him into the midst of
diversions and amusements of all kinds. The season for balls and fetes
was just beginning, and the duchess and her daughters did the honors
of Paris to the young Breton, who was insensibly diverted from his
own thoughts by the movement and life of the great city. He found some
resemblance of mind between Madame de Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu,
who was certainly one of the handsomest and most charming girls in
Parisian society, and this fancied likeness made him give to her
coquetries a willing attention which no other woman could possibly have
obtained from him. Sabine herself was greatly pleased with Calyste, and
matters went so well that during the winter of 1837 the young Baron du
Guenic, whose youth and health had returned to him, listened without
repugnance to his mother when she reminded him of the promise made
to his dying father and proposed to him a marriage with Sabine de
Grandlieu. Still, while agreeing to fulfil his promise, he concealed
within his soul an indifference to all things, of which the baroness
alone was aware, but which she trusted would be conquered by the
pleasures of a happy home.

On the day when the Grandlieu family and the baroness, accompanied by
her relations who came from England for this occasion, assembled in the
grand salon of the hotel de Grandlieu to sign the marriage contract,
and Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the preliminaries
of that contract before reading it, Calyste, on whose forehead every one
present might have noticed clouds, suddenly and curtly refused to accept
the benefactions offered him by Mademoiselle des Touches. Did he still
count on Felicite's devotion to recover Beatrix? In the midst of the
embarrassment and stupefaction of the assembled families, Sabine de
Grandlieu entered the room and gave him a letter, explaining that
Mademoiselle des Touches had requested her to give it to him on this
occasion.

Calyste turned awa