ct, he answered impatiently
that he did not intend to go. His grandmother heard the remark, and made
an especial request that he would change that decision and accompany
them. Bertha added her entreaties; but Maurice seemed inclined to rebel,
until she whispered,--

"If you stay at home, my aunt will say it is Madeleine's fault, and she
will be vexed with her again. Madeleine begged you would spare her this
new trial, and bade me entreat you to go."

Maurice looked across the table, for the first time during dinner, and
found Madeleine's eyes turned anxiously upon him.

"I will go," he murmured.

His words were addressed rather to her than to Bertha. A scarcely
perceptible smile on the lips of the former was his reward.

No comment was made upon Madeleine's determination to remain at home.
But the tone of the countess to her niece, when she was officiating as
usual at her aunt's toilet, was gentler than she had ever before used.
Not the faintest allusion to the events of the morning dropped from the
lips of either.

At last the carriage drove from the door, and Madeleine was left alone
with her own thoughts. The mask of composure was no longer needed, yet
there was no return of the morning's turbulent emotion.

Are not great trials sent to incite us to great exertions, which we
might not have the energy, the wit, perhaps the _humility_, to
undertake, but for the spurring sting of that especial grief? Madeleine
had resolutely looked her affliction full in the face; had grown
familiar with its sternest, saddest features; had bowed before them,
and dashed the tears from her eyes, to see more clearly as that sorrow
pointed out a path which all her firmness would be taxed in treading,--a
path which she had never dreamed existed for her, until it had been
opened, hewn through the rocks of circumstance by that day's heavy
blows, that hour's piercing anguish.

Her greatest difficulty lay in the necessity of concealing the step she
was about to take from her aunt, whose violent opposition would throw a
fearful obstacle in the way. It was easier to avoid than to surmount
such a barrier; but if it could not be avoided, it _must_ be surmounted.
In that decision she could not waver.

CHAPTER VIII.

FLIGHT.

Can there be a more dreary solitude, to a mind writhing under the throes
of some new and hidden sorrow, than a brilliant ballroom? The stirring
music jars like harshest discord upon the unattuned ear; the gl