sire--to have certainty:--

To Madame la Baronne du Guenic:

Dear Mamma,--When you come to Paris, as you allow us to hope you
will, I shall thank you in person for the beautiful present by
which you and my aunt Zephirine and Calyste wish to reward me for
doing my duty. I was already well repaid by my own happiness in
doing it. I can never express the pleasure you have given me in
that beautiful dressing-table, but when you are with me I shall
try to do so. Believe me, when I array myself before that
treasure, I shall think, like the Roman matron, that my noblest
jewel is our little angel, etc.

She directed the letter to Guerande and gave it to the footman to post.

When the Vicomtesse de Portenduere came, the shuddering chill of
reaction had succeeded in poor Sabine this first paroxysm of madness.

"Ursula, I think I am going to die," she said.

"What is the matter, dear?"

"Where did Savinien and Calyste go after they dined with you yesterday?"

"Dined with me?" said Ursula, to whom her husband had said nothing, not
expecting such immediate inquiry. "Savinien and I dined alone together
and went to the Opera without Calyste."

"Ursula, dearest, in the name of your love for Savinien, keep silence
about what you have just said to me and what I shall now tell you. You
alone shall know why I die--I am betrayed! at the end of three years, at
twenty-two years of age!"

Her teeth chattered, her eyes were dull and frozen, her face had taken
on the greenish tinge of an old Venetian mirror.

"You! so beautiful! For whom?"

"I don't know yet. But Calyste has told me two lies. Do not pity me, do
not seem incensed, pretend ignorance and perhaps you can find out who
_she_ is through Savinien. Oh! that letter of yesterday!"

Trembling, shaking, she sprang from her bed to a piece of furniture from
which she took the letter.

"See," she said, lying down again, "the coronet of a marquise! Find out
if Madame de Rochefide has returned to Paris. Am I to have a heart in
which to weep and moan? Oh, dearest!--to see one's beliefs, one's poesy,
idol, virtue, happiness, all, all in pieces, withered, lost! No God in
the sky! no love upon earth! no life in my heart! no anything! I don't
know if there's daylight; I doubt the sun. I've such anguish in my soul
I scarcely feel the horrible sufferings in my body. Happily, the baby is
weaned; my milk would have poisoned him."

At that idea the tears began to flow f