howed
more and more reserve. Thereupon he determined that she should be his
wife. He swore it to himself, with the exaggerated emphasis of weak
characters, who seem always to combat beforehand the difficulties to
which they know that they must yield some day.

It was the happiest moment of little Chebe's life. Even aside from
any ambitious project, her coquettish, false nature found a strange
fascination in this intrigue, carried on mysteriously amid banquets and
merry-makings.

No one about them suspected anything. Claire was at that healthy and
delightful period of youth when the mind, only partly open, clings to
the things it knows with blind confidence, in complete ignorance of
treachery and falsehood. M. Fromont thought of nothing but his business.
His wife polished her jewels with frenzied energy. Only old Gardinois
and his little, gimlet-like eyes were to be feared; but Sidonie
entertained him, and even if he had discovered anything, he was not the
man to interfere with her future.

Her hour of triumph was near, when a sudden, unforeseen disaster blasted
her hopes.

One Sunday morning M. Fromont was brought back fatally wounded from a
hunting expedition. A bullet intended for a deer had pierced his temple.
The chateau was turned upside-down.

All the hunters, among them the unknown bungler that had fired the fatal
shot, started in haste for Paris. Claire, frantic with grief, entered
the room where her father lay on his deathbed, there to remain; and
Risler, being advised of the catastrophe, came to take Sidonie home.

On the night before her departure she had a final meeting with Georges
at The Phantom,--a farewell meeting, painful and stealthy, and made
solemn by the proximity of death. They vowed, however, to love each
other always; they agreed upon a method of writing to each other. Then
they parted.

It was a sad journey home.

Sidonie returned abruptly to her every-day life, escorted by the
despairing grief of Risler, to whom his dear master's death was an
irreparable loss. On her arrival, she was compelled to describe her
visit to the smallest detail; discuss the inmates of the chateau, the
guests, the entertainments, the dinners, and the final catastrophe.
What torture for her, when, absorbed as she was by a single, unchanging
thought, she had so much need of silence and solitude! But there was
something even more terrible than that.

On the first day after her return Frantz resumed his former