nity,
you must read it, or you will be no better than a wilful, passionate
child. You must make this sacrifice to the world, to the law, and to
God.'

"As she saw in this concession no attack on her womanly resolve, she
consented. All the labor or four or five months had been building up to
this moment. But do not the Pyramids end in a point on which a bird may
perch? The Count had set all his hopes on this supreme instant, and he
had reached it.

"In all my life I remember nothing more formidable than my uncle's
entrance into that little Pompadour drawing-room, at ten that evening.
The fine head, with its silver hair thrown into relief by the entirely
black dress, and the divinely calm face, had a magical effect on the
Comtesse Honorine; she had the feeling of cool balm on her wounds, and
beamed in the reflection of that virtue which gave light without knowing
it.

"'Monsieur the Cure of the White Friars,' said old Gobain.

"'Are you come, uncle, with a message of happiness and peace?' said I.

"'Happiness and peace are always to be found in obedience to the
precepts of the Church,' replied my uncle, and he handed the Countess
the following letter:--

"'MY DEAR HONORINE,--

"'If you had but done me the favor of trusting me, if you had read the
letter I wrote to you five years since, you would have spared yourself
five years of useless labor, and of privations which have grieved me
deeply. In it I proposed an arrangement of which the stipulations will
relieve all your fears, and make our domestic life possible. I have much
to reproach myself with, and in seven years of sorrow I have discovered
all my errors. I misunderstood marriage. I failed to scent danger when
it threatened you. An angel was in the house. The Lord bid me guard it
well! The Lord has punished me for my audacious confidence.

"'You cannot give yourself a single lash without striking me. Have mercy
on me, my dear Honorine. I so fully appreciated your susceptibilities
that I would not bring you back to the old house in the Rue Payenne,
where I can live without you, but which I could not bear to see again
with you. I am decorating, with great pleasure, another house, in the
Faubourg Saint-Honore, to which, in hope, I conduct not a wife whom I
owe to her ignorance of life, and secured to me by law, but a sister
who will allow me to press on her brow such a kiss as a father gives the
daughter he blesses every day.

"'Will you bereave me of the ri