there was an attachment: he had some reason to believe in sudden
attachments. Colonel Dujardin, an old acquaintance, had come back
to France wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure: this
incident appeared neither strange nor any way important. What affected
him most deeply was the death of Raynal, his personal friend and patron.
But when his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave him
leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by his great joy at the
prospect of seeing Rose. He walked over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a
sling, his heart beating. He was coming to receive the reward of all he
had done, and all he had attempted. "I will surprise them," thought he.
"I will see her face when I come in at the door: oh, happy hour! this
pays for all." He entered the house without announcing himself; he went
softly up to the saloon; to his great disappointment he found no one
but the baroness: she received him kindly, but not with the warmth he
expected. She was absorbed in her new grief. He asked timidly after her
daughters. "Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others. You will
not, however, see her: she keeps her room. My daughter Rose is taking
a walk, I believe." After some polite inquiries, and sympathy with his
accident, the baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus
liberated ran in search of his beloved.

He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone. She was walking
with an officer, a handsome, commanding, haughty, brilliant officer. She
was walking by his side, talking earnestly to him.

An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere; and then came a feeling of
death at his heart, a new symptom in his young life.

The next moment Rose caught sight of him. She flushed all over and
uttered a little exclamation, and she bounded towards him like a little
antelope, and put out both her hands at once. He could only give her
one.

"Ah!" she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and took his hand with
both hers.

This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a cold place. He was
all happiness.

When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, and she said quickly,
"I will come down to welcome him--dear Edouard!"

The sisters looked at one another. Josephine blushed. Rose smiled and
kissed her. She colored higher still, and said, "No, she was ashamed to
go down."

"Why?"

"Look at my face."

"I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses other peop