wish to see him again."

Then Hubertine added: "Very well; you will not see him again. But
nothing should ever prevent one from being polite."

Angelique, making some trivial excuse, hurried up to her room as quickly
as possible. Then she gave free course to her tears. Ah, how intensely
happy she was, yet how she suffered! Her poor, dear beloved; he was sad
enough when he found he must leave her! But she must not forget that she
had made a vow to the saints, that although she loved him better than
life, he should never know it.

CHAPTER VIII

On the evening of this same day, immediately after leaving the
dinner-table, Angelique complained of not being at all well, and went
up at once to her room. The agitation and excitement of the morning, her
struggles against her true self, had quite exhausted her. She made haste
to go to bed, and covering her head with the sheet, with a desperate
feeling of disappearing for ever if she could, again the tears came to
her relief.

The hours passed slowly, and soon it was night--a warm July night, the
heavy, oppressive quiet of which entered through the window, which had
been left wide open. In the dark heavens glistened a multitude of stars.
It must have been nearly eleven o'clock, and the moon, already grown
quite thin in its last quarter, would not rise until midnight.

And in the obscure chamber, Angelique still wept nervously a flow of
inexhaustible tears, seemingly without reason, when a slight noise at
her door caused her to lift up her head.

There was a short silence, when a voice called her tenderly.

"Angelique! Angelique! My darling child!"

She recognised the voice of Hubertine. Without doubt the latter, in her
room with her husband, had just heard the distant sound of sobbing, and
anxious, half-undressed, she had come upstairs to find out what was the
matter with her daughter.

"Angelique, are you ill, my dear?"

Retaining her breath, the young girl made no answer. She did not wish to
be unkind, but her one absorbing idea at this moment was of solitude.
To be alone was the only possible alleviation of her trouble. A word of
consolation, a caress, even from her mother, would have distressed her.
She imagined that she saw her standing at the other side of the door,
and from the delicacy of the rustling movement on the tiled floor she
thought she must be barefooted. Two or three minutes passed, and she
knew the kind watcher had not left her place, but that,