when
she spoke to him; but she no longer hesitated to address the first word.
She even ventured at times to ask him a question. If she had heard a
play well spoken of and wished to know the subject, M. Daburon would at
once go to see it, and commit a complete account of it to writing, which
he would send her through the post. At times she intrusted him with
trifling commissions, the execution of which he would not have exchanged
for the Russian embassy.

Once he ventured to send her a magnificent bouquet. She accepted it with
an air of uneasy surprise, but begged him not to repeat the offering.

The tears came to his eyes; he left her presence broken-hearted, and the
unhappiest of men. "She does not love me," thought he, "she will never
love me." But, three days after, as he looked very sad, she begged him
to procure her certain flowers, then very much in fashion, which she
wished to place on her flower-stand. He sent enough to fill the house
from the garret to the cellar. "She will love me," he whispered to
himself in his joy.

These events, so trifling but yet so great, had not interrupted the
games of piquet; only the young girl now appeared to interest herself
in the play, nearly always taking the magistrate's side against the
marchioness. She did not understand the game very well; but, when
the old gambler cheated too openly, she would notice it, and say,
laughingly,--"She is robbing you, M. Daburon,--she is robbing you!" He
would willingly have been robbed of his entire fortune, to hear that
sweet voice raised on his behalf.

It was summer time. Often in the evening she accepted his arm, and,
while the marchioness remained at the window, seated in her arm-chair,
they walked around the lawn, treading lightly upon the paths spread with
gravel sifted so fine that the trailing of her light dress effaced the
traces of their footsteps. She chatted gaily with him, as with a beloved
brother, while he was obliged to do violence to his feelings, to refrain
from imprinting a kiss upon the little blonde head, from which the light
breeze lifted the curls and scattered them like fleecy clouds. At such
moments, he seemed to tread an enchanted path strewn with flowers, at
the end of which appeared happiness.

When he attempted to speak of his hopes to the marchioness, she would
say: "You know what we agreed upon. Not a word. Already does the
voice of conscience reproach me for lending my countenance to such an
abomination.