"Of what were you doubtful?" returned de Buxieres, quite ready to take
offence at the answer.

"I am about to tell you. Do you remember the first conversation we had
together concerning Reine? You spoke of her with so much earnestness
that I then suspected you of being in love with her."

"I--I--hardly remember," faltered Julien, coloring.

"In that case, my memory is better than yours, Monsieur de Buxieres.
To-day, my suspicions have become certainties. You are in love with
Reine Vincart!"

"I?" faintly protested his cousin.

"Don't deny it, but rather, give me your confidence; you will not be
sorry for it. You love Reine, and have loved her for a long while.
You have succeeded in hiding it from me because it is hard for you to
unbosom yourself; but, yesterday, I saw it quite plainly. You dare not
affirm the contrary!"

Julien, greatly agitated, had hidden his face in his hands. After a
moment's silence, he replied, defiantly: "Well, and supposing it is so?
What is the use of talking about it, since Reine's affections are placed
elsewhere?"

"Oh! that's another matter. Reine has declined to have me, and I really
think she has some other affair in her head. Yet, to confess the truth,
the clerk at the iron-works was a lover of my own imagining; she never
thought of him."

"Then why did you tell such a lie?" cried Julien, impetuously.

"Because I thought I would plead the lie to get at the truth. Forgive me
for having made use of this old trick to put you on the right track. It
wasn't such a bad idea, for I succeeded in finding out what you took so
much pains to hide from me."

"To hide from you? Yes, I did wish to hide it from you. Wasn't that
right, since I was convinced that Reine loved you?" exclaimed Julien,
in an almost stifled voice, as if the avowal were choking him. "I have
always thought it idle to parade one's feelings before those who do not
care about them."

"You were wrong," returned poor Claudet, sighing deeply, "if you had
spoken for yourself, I have an idea you would have been better received,
and you would have spared me a terrible heart-breaking."

He said it with such profound sadness that Julien, notwithstanding the
absorbing nature of his own thoughts, was quite overcome, and almost
on the point of confessing, openly, the intensity of his feeling toward
Reine Vincart. But, accustomed as he was, by long habit, to concentrate
every emotion within himself, he found it impossible to becom