dy are
willing to guarantee their fortune to her; it amounts to over
sixty thousand francs a year."

This letter agonized Ursula's heart and afflicted her with the tortures
of jealousy, a form of suffering hitherto unknown to her, but which
to this fine organization, so sensitive to pain, threw a pall over the
present and over the future, and even over the past. From the moment
when she received this fatal paper she lay on the doctor's sofa, her
eyes fixed on space, lost in a dreadful dream. In an instant the chill
of death had come upon her warm young life. Alas, worse than that! it
was like the awful awakening of the dead to the sense that there was
no God,--the masterpiece of that strange genius called Jean Paul. Four
times La Bougival called her to breakfast. When the faithful creature
tried to remonstrate, Ursula waved her hand and answered in one harsh
word, "Hush!" said despotically, in strange contrast to her usual gentle
manner. La Bougival, watching her mistress through the glass door, saw
her alternately red with a consuming fever, and blue as if a shudder of
cold had succeeded that unnatural heat. This condition grew worse and
worse up to four o'clock; then she rose to see if Savinien were coming,
but he did not come. Jealousy and distrust tear all reserves from love.
Ursula, who till then had never made one gesture by which her love could
be guessed, now took her hat and shawl and rushed into the passage as if
to go and meet him. But an afterthought of modesty sent her back to her
little salon, where she stayed and wept. When the abbe arrived in the
evening La Bougival met him at the door.

"Ah, monsieur!" she cried; "I don't know what's the matter with
mademoiselle; she is--"

"I know," said the abbe sadly, stopping the words of the poor nurse.

He then told Ursula (what she had not dared to verify) that Madame de
Portenduere had gone to dine at Rouvre.

"And Savinien too?" she asked.

"Yes."

Ursula was seized with a little nervous tremor which made the abbe
quiver as though a whole Leyden jar had been discharged at him; he felt
moreover a lasting commotion in his heart.

"So we shall not go there to-night," he said as gently as he could;
"and, my child, it would be better if you did not go there again.
The old lady will receive you in a way to wound your pride. Monsieur
Bongrand and I, who had succeeded in bringing her to consider your
marriage, have no idea from what quarter this new influ