o
love in that way. Be noble enough to lay aside all self-love and turn
our attachment, hitherto so doubtful and full of trouble, into this
sweet and sacred love. In this way I shall be enabled to still live. I
will begin to-night by taking Lady Dudley's hand."

She did not weep as she said these words so full of bitter knowledge,
by which, casting aside the last remaining veil which hid her soul from
mine, she showed by how many ties she had linked herself to me, how many
chains I had hewn apart. Our emotions were so great that for a time we
did not notice it was raining heavily.

"Will Madame la comtesse wait here under shelter?" asked the coachman,
pointing to the chief inn of Ballan.

She made a sign of assent, and we stayed nearly half an hour under the
vaulted entrance, to the great surprise of the inn-people who wondered
what brought Madame de Mortsauf on that road at eleven o'clock at night.
Was she going to Tours? Had she come from there? When the storm ceased
and the rain turned to what is called in Touraine a "brouee," which does
not hinder the moon from shining through the higher mists as the wind
with its upper currents whirls them away, the coachman drove from our
shelter, and, to my great delight, turned to go back the way we came.

"Follow my orders," said the countess, gently.

We now took the road across the Charlemagne moor, where the rain began
again. Half-way across I heard the barking of Arabella's dog; a horse
came suddenly from beneath a clump of oaks, jumped the ditch which
owners of property dig around their cleared lands when they consider
them suitable for cultivation, and carried Lady Dudley to the moor to
meet the carriage.

"What pleasure to meet a love thus if it can be done without sin," said
Henriette.

The barking of the dog had told Lady Dudley that I was in the carriage.
She thought, no doubt, that I had brought it to meet her on account of
the rain. When we reached the spot where she was waiting, she urged her
horse to the side of the road with the equestrian dexterity for which
she was famous, and which to Henriette seemed marvellous.

"Amedee," she said, and the name in her English pronunciation had a
fairy-like charm.

"He is here, madame," said the countess, looking at the fantastic
creature plainly visible in the moonlight, whose impatient face was
oddly swathed in locks of hair now out of curl.

You know with what swiftness two women examine each other. The
Englis