nd tell her that we are comrades, and ask her to speak to
one of her lady friends, who will undertake your business, and I do not
doubt but that, if you like, you will have a good time, and that the
melancholy which now bears you down will disappear--if you care to get
rid of it."

"If it were not for breaking my vow to my mistress, I should desire
nothing better," said Conrad, "but at any rate I will try it."

With that Gerard turned over and went to sleep, but Katherine was so
stricken with grief at seeing and hearing the falsehood of him whom she
loved more than all the world, that she wished herself dead and more
than dead. Nevertheless, she put aside all feminine feeling, and assumed
manly vigour. She even had the strength of mind to talk for a long time
the next day with the girl who loved the man _she_ had once adored; and
even compelled her heart and eyes to be witnesses of many interviews and
love passages that were most galling to her.

Whilst she was talking to Gerard's mistress, she saw the ring that she
had given her unfaithful lover, but she was not so foolish as to admire
it, but nevertheless found an opportunity to examine it closely on the
girl's finger, but appeared to pay no heed to it, and soon afterwards
left.

As soon as supper was over, she went to her uncle, and said to him;

"We have been long enough in Barrois! It is time to leave. Be ready
to-morrow morning at daybreak, and I will be also. And take care that
all our baggage is prepared. Come for me as early as you like."

"You have but to come down when you will," replied the uncle.

Now you must know that after supper, whilst Gerard was conversing with
his mistress, she who had been his lady-love went to her chamber and
began to write a letter, which narrated at full length the love affairs
of herself and Gerard, also "the promises which they made at parting,
how they had wished to marry her to another and how she had refused, and
the pilgrimage that she had undertaken to keep her word and come to him,
and the disloyalty and falsehood she had found in him, in word, act,
and deed. And that, for the causes mentioned, she held herself free
and disengaged from the promise she had formerly made. And that she was
going to return to her own country and never wished to see him or meet
him again, he being the falsest man who ever made vows to a woman. And
as regards the ring that she had given him, that he had forfeited it by
passing it into th