is no
occasion for any of that romantic love which so often runs in your
sex's heads in such a disturbing fashion."

"I have an idea," said Madame von G----, "that Angelica's heart is not
so free as, perhaps, she herself imagines it is."

"Nonsense," cried the Colonel, and was on the point of breaking out in
a passion, when the door opened, and Angelica came in, with the
loveliest smile of the most ingenuous simplicity. The Colonel, at once
losing all his irritation, went to her, took her hand, kissed her on
the brow, and sat down close beside her. He spoke of the Count,
praising his noble exterior, intellectual superiority, character, and
disposition; and then asked her if she thought she could care for him.
She answered that at first he had appeared very strange and eery to
her, but that now those feelings had quite disappeared, and that she
liked him very much.

"Heaven be thanked then!" cried the Colonel. "Thus it was ordained to
turn out, for my comfort, for my happiness. Count S--- loves you, my
darling child, with all his heart. He asks for your hand, and you won't
refuse him." But scarcely had he uttered those words when Angelica,
with a deep sigh, sank back as if insensible. Her mother caught her in
her arms, casting a significant glance at the Colonel, who gazed
speechless at the poor child, who was as pale as death. But she
recovered herself; a burst of tears ran down her cheeks, and she cried,
in a heart-breaking voice, "The Count! the terrible Count! oh, no, no;
never, never!"

As gently as possible the Colonel asked her why it was that the Count
was so terrible to her. Then Angelica told him that at the instant when
he had said that the Count loved her, that dream which she dreamt four
years before, on the night before her fourteenth birthday--from which
she awoke in such deadly terror without being able to remember the
images or incidents of it in the very slightest--had come back to her
memory quite clearly.

"I thought," she said, "I was walking in a beautiful garden where there
were strange bushes and flowers which I had never seen the like of
before. Suddenly I found myself close before a wonderful tree with dark
leaves, large flowers, and a curious perfume something like that of the
elder. Its branches were swaying and making a delicious rustling, and
it seemed to be making signs inviting me to rest under its shade.
Irresistibly impelled by some invisible power, I sank down on the grass
which