vices.

Why was he so much opposed to marriage? His friends found the
explanation in a certain person, half housekeeper, half companion, who
lived in the castle, and was very pretty and very designing. But there
are malicious tongues everywhere.

The next year, however, an event occurred which was calculated to give
some ground to these idle, gossiping tales. One fine morning in the
month of July, 1847, the lady died suddenly of apoplexy. Six weeks
later, a report began to spread that Count Ville-Handry was going to be
married.

The report was well founded. The count did marry. The fact could not
be doubted any longer, when the banns were read, and the announcement
appeared in the official journal. And whom do you think he married?
The daughter of a poor widow, the Baroness Rupert, who lived in great
poverty at a place called Rosiers, having nothing but a small pension
derived from her husband, who had been a colonel of artillery.

If she had, at least, been of good and ancient family; if she had been,
at least, a native of the province!

But no. No one knew exactly who she was, or where she came from. Some
people said the colonel had married her in Austria; others, in Sweden.
Her husband, they added, had been made a baron after the fashion of
others, who dubbed themselves such during the first empire, and had no
right to call himself noble.

On the other hand, Pauline de Rupert, then twenty-three years old, was
in the full bloom of youth, and marvellously beautiful. Moreover, she
had, up to this time, been looked upon as a sensible, modest girl, very
bright and very sweet withal; in fact, possessed of every quality and
virtue that can make life happy, and add to the fame of a great house.

But now, not a cent, no dower, not even a trousseau!

Everybody was amazed; and a perfect storm of indignation arose in the
neighborhood. Was it possible, was it natural, that a great nobleman
like the count should end thus miserably, ridiculously? that he should
marry a penniless girl, an adventuress,--he who had had the pick and
choice of the richest and greatest ladies of the land?

Was Count Ville-Handry a fool? or was he only insane about Miss Rupert?
Was she not perhaps, after all, a designing hypocrite, who had very
quietly, in her retired home, woven the net in which the lion of Anjou
was now held captive?

People would have been less astonished, if they had known, that, for
years, a great intimacy had existed bet