ate this answer
of mine, though to-day it may be that you blame its hardness. You
will turn with pleasure to an old woman whose friendship will
certainly be sweet and precious to you then; a friendship untried
by the extremes of passion and the disenchanting processes of
life; a friendship which noble thoughts and thoughts of religion
will keep pure and sacred. Farewell; do my bidding with the
thought that your success will bring a gleam of pleasure into my
solitude, and only think of me as we think of absent friends."

Gaston de Nueil read the letter, and wrote the following lines:--

"MADAME,--If I could cease to love you, to take the chances of
becoming an ordinary man which you hold out to me, you must admit
that I should thoroughly deserve my fate. No, I shall not do as
you bid me; the oath of fidelity which I swear to you shall only
be absolved by death. Ah! take my life, unless indeed you do not
fear to carry a remorse all through your own----"

When the man returned from his errand, M. de Nueil asked him with whom
he left the note?

"I gave it to Mme. la Vicomtesse herself, sir; she was in her carriage
and just about to start."

"For the town?"

"I don't think so, sir. Mme. la Vicomtesse had post-horses."

"Ah! then she is going away," said the Baron.

"Yes, sir," the man answered.

Gaston de Nueil at once prepared to follow Mme. de Beauseant. She led
the way as far as Geneva, without a suspicion that he followed. And
he? Amid the many thoughts that assailed him during that journey, one
all-absorbing problem filled his mind--"Why did she go away?" Theories
grew thickly on such ground for supposition, and naturally he inclined
to the one that flattered his hopes--"If the Vicomtesse cares for me,
a clever woman would, of course, choose Switzerland, where nobody knows
either of us, in preference to France, where she would find censorious
critics."

An impassioned lover of a certain stamp would not feel attracted to a
woman clever enough to choose her own ground; such women are too clever.
However, there is nothing to prove that there was any truth in Gaston's
supposition.

The Vicomtesse took a small house by the side of the lake. As soon as
she was installed in it, Gaston came one summer evening in the twilight.
Jacques, that flunkey in grain, showed no sign of surprise, and
announced _M. le Baron de Nueil_ like a discreet domestic well
acquainted with good society. At th