should it
not enter into my plans to excite Pierre's jealousy? My old traditional
hatred for you has perhaps made this deep calculation; he would kill
either you or me, and that would be as good a denouement as any other."

"You must allow me to prefer another," said Lucan, still trying, but
without much success, to give a cheerful turn to this wildly passionate
conversation.

"However," she went on, "you may rest easy, my dear sir. Pierre is not
jealous. He suspects nothing, as they say in plays!"

She laughed one of her wicked laughs, and added at once in a graver tone:

"And what could he suspect? In being amiable toward you, I am merely
acting under order, and no one can tell how much of it is genuine and how
much put on."

"I feel quite certain that you don't know yourself," he said, laughingly.
"You are a person of naturally restless disposition; you require
agitation, and when there is none you try to imitate it as best as you
can. Whether you like, or whether you don't like your step-father, is not
a very dramatic affair. There is no room here for any but very simple and
very ordinary sentiments. It is well enough to complicate them a
little--is it not, my dear?"

"Yes, my dear!" she said, emphasizing ironically the last word.

Whereupon she started her horse at a gallop.

They were then just reaching the edge of the woods. He soon saw her leave
the direct road that led across them, and take a path over the heath as if
intending to dash through the thickest of the timber. At the same instant
Clotilde ran up to him, and touching his shoulder with the tip of her
whip:

"Where in the world is Julia going?" she said.

Lucan replied with a vague gesture and a smile.

"I am sure," rejoined Clotilde, "that she is going to drink at that
fountain, yonder. She was complaining a little while since of being
thirsty. Do follow her, dear, will you, and prevent her doing so. She is
so warm! It might be fatal to her. Run, I beg of you."

Monsieur de Lucan gave the reins to his horse, and he started like the
wind. Julia had already disappeared under cover of the woods. He followed
her track; but among the timber, the roots and the roughness of the ground
somewhat checked his speed. At a short distance, in the center of a narrow
clearing, the labor of ages and the filtrations of the soil had hollowed
out one of those mysterious fountains whose limpid water, moss-grown
banks, and aspect of deep solitude delight the i