times a day without any
particular reason, went out as she had entered, and left Bathilde alone.

Bathilde had only just glanced at the letter, and it had seemed to
dazzle her. As soon as Nanette was gone she read it a second time.

It would have been impossible to have said more in fewer words. If
D'Harmental had taken a whole day to combine every word of the billet,
instead of writing on the spur of the moment, he could not have done it
better. Indeed, he established a similarity of position between himself
and the orphan; he interested Bathilde in her neighbor's fate on account
of a menacing danger, a danger which would appear all the greater to the
young girl from her not knowing its nature; and, finally, the expression
brother and sister, so skillfully glided in at the end, and to ask a
simple prayer, excluded from these first advances all idea of love.

It followed, therefore, that, if at this moment Bathilde had found
herself vis-a-vis with D'Harmental, instead of being embarrassed and
blushing, as a young girl would who had just received her first
love-letter, she would have taken him by the hand and said to him,
smiling--"Be satisfied, I will pray for you." There remained, however,
on the mind of Bathilde something more dangerous than all the
declarations in the world, and that was the idea of the peril which her
neighbor ran. By a sort of presentiment with which she had been seized
on seeing him, with a face so different from his ordinary expression,
nail the crimson ribbon to his window, and withdraw it directly the
captain entered, she was almost sure that the danger was somehow
connected with this new personage, whom she had never seen before. But
how did this danger concern him? What was the nature of the danger
itself? This was what she asked herself in vain. She thought of a duel,
but to a man such as the chevalier appeared to be, a duel was not one of
those dangers for which one asks the prayers of women; besides, the hour
named was not suitable to duels. Bathilde lost herself in her
conjectures; but, in losing herself, she thought of the chevalier,
always of the chevalier, and of nothing but the chevalier; and, if he
had calculated upon such an effect, it must be owned that his
calculations were wofully true for poor Bathilde.

The day passed; and, whether it was intentional, or whether it was that
he was otherwise employed, Bathilde saw him no more, and his window
remained closed. When Buvat came h