er
the boxes; she gave him lumps of sugar and chatted with him. She filled
with flowers and verdant foliage the apartments set apart for the young
couple.

This fever of happiness soon came to its happy termination. About a week
after her arrival in Paris, Julia wrote to her mother that they expected,
her husband and herself, to leave that evening, and that they would be in
Cherbourg the next morning. Clotilde prepared, of course, to go and meet
them with her carriage. Monsieur de Lucan, after duly conferring with her
on the subject, thought best not to accompany her. He feared that he might
interfere with the first emotions of the return, and yet, not wishing that
Julia should attribute his absence to a lack of attention, he resolved to
go and meet the travelers on horseback.

CHAPTER V.

FATHER AND STEP-DAUGHTER.

It was on one of the first days of June. Clotilde had left early in the
morning, fresh and radiant as the dawn. Two hours later, Lucan mounted his
horse and started at a walk. The roads are lovely in Normandy at this
season. The hawthorn hedges perfume the country, and sprinkle here and
there the edges of the road with their rosy snow. A profusion of fresh
verdure, dotted with wild flowers, covers the face of the ditches. All
that, under the gay morning sun, is a feast for the eyes. M. de Lucan,
however, greatly contrary to his custom, bestowed but very slight
attention upon the spectacle of that smiling nature. He was preoccupied,
to a degree that surprised himself, with his coming meeting with his
step-daughter. Julia had been such a besetting thought in his mind that he
had retained of her an exaggerated impression. He strove in vain to
restore her to her natural proportions, which were, after all, only those
of a child, formerly a naughty child, now a prodigal child. He had become
accustomed to invest her, in his imagination, with a mysterious importance
and a sort of fatal power, of which he found it difficult to strip her. He
laughed and felt irritated at his own weakness; but he experienced an
agitation mingled with curiosity and vague uneasiness, at the moment of
beholding face to face that sphinx whose shadow had so long disturbed his
life, and who now came in person to sit at his fireside.

An open barouche, decked with parasols, appeared at the summit of a hill;
Lucan saw a head leaning and a handkerchief waving outside the carriage;
he urged at once his horse to a gallop. Almost at t