nt, much
against her habit, and she cast embarrassed looks upon him; she approached
him several times with a constrained smile and confidential manner, but
confined herself to addressing to him a few commonplace words. Availing
herself at last of a moment when Clotilde was giving some orders, she
leaned out of the carriage-window, and, pressing significantly Monsieur de
Lucan's hand:

"Be true and faithful to her, sir!" she said.

The carriage started almost immediately, but not before he had had time to
notice that her eyes were filled with tears.

The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan's attention at the time,
and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very
morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen
during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville,
an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing
to light again. The question at issue was a claim for some public property
the effect of which would have been to strip Monsieur de Lucan of a
portion of his timbered lands and to curtail materially his patrimonial
estate. He had gained his suit in the lower court, but an appeal was soon
to be heard, and he was not without fears as to the final result. He had
no difficulty in using that pretext, to account during the next few days,
to the eyes of the inhabitants of the chateau, for a severity of
physiognomy, a briefness of language, and a fondness for solitude, which
concealed perhaps graver cares. That pretext, however, soon failed him. A
telegram informed him, early the following week, that the suit had been
finally decided in his favor, and he was compelled to manifest on this
occasion an apparent joy that was far indeed from his heart.

He resumed from that moment the usual routine of family life to which
Julia continued to impart the movement of her active imagination. However,
he ceased to lend himself with the same affectionate familiarity to the
caprices of his step-daughter. She noticed it; but she was not the only
one who did. Lucan detected surprise in the eyes of Monsieur de Moras,
reproaches in those of Clotilde. A new danger appeared before him; he was
acting in a manner which it was equally impossible, equally perilous to
explain or to allow being interpreted.

With time, however, the frightful light that had flashed across his brain
in a recent circumstance was growing gradually fainter; it had ceas