ed her, not to life, it is true, but to the consciousness of some
dreadful suffering. I meanwhile walked up and down the path behind the
house, weeping, and doubting my success. I only wished to give up this
part of the bird-catcher which I had so rashly assumed. Madame Gobain,
who came down and found me with my face wet with tears, hastily went up
again to say to the Countess:

"'What has happened, madame? Monsieur Maurice is crying like a child.'

"Roused to action by the evil interpretation that might be put on our
mutual behavior, she summoned superhuman strength to put on a wrapper
and come down to me.

"'You are not the cause of this attack,' said she. 'I am subject to
these spasms, a sort of cramp of the heart----'

"'And will you not tell me of your troubles?' said I, in a voice which
cannot be affected, as I wiped away my tears. 'Have you not just now
told me that you have been a mother, and have been so unhappy as to lose
your child?'

"'Marie!' she called as she rang the bell. Gobain came in.

"'Bring lights and some tea,' said she, with the calm decision of a
Mylady clothed in the armor of pride by the dreadful English training
which you know too well.

"When the housekeeper had lighted the tapers and closed the shutters,
the Countess showed me a mute countenance; her indomitable pride and
gravity, worthy of a savage, had already reasserted their mastery. She
said:

"'Do you know why I like Lord Byron so much? It is because he suffered
as animals do. Of what use are complaints when they are not an elegy
like Manfred's, nor bitter mockery like Don Juan's, nor a reverie like
Childe Harold's? Nothing shall be known of me. My heart is a poem that I
lay before God.'

"'If I chose----' said I.

"'If?' she repeated.

"'I have no interest in anything,' I replied, 'so I cannot be
inquisitive; but, if I chose, I could know all your secrets by
to-morrow.'

"'I defy you!' she exclaimed, with ill-disguised uneasiness.

"'Seriously?'

"'Certainly,' said she, tossing her head. 'If such a crime is possible,
I ought to know it.'

"'In the first place, madame,' I went on, pointing to her hands,
'those pretty fingers, which are enough to show that you are not a mere
girl--were they made for toil? Then you call yourself Madame Gobain,
you, who, in my presence the other day on receiving a letter, said to
Marie: "Here, this is for you?" Marie is the real Madame Gobain; so
you conceal your name behind that of