llers, for under such
circumstances intelligent persons given new meanings to commonplace
talk; but every word, insignificant as it might seem, was a mutual
interrogation, hiding the desires, hopes, and passions which agitated
them. Marie's cleverness and quick perception (for she was fully on her
guard) showed Madame du Gua that calumny and treachery could alone avail
to triumph over a rival as formidable through her intellect as by her
beauty. The mail-coach presently overtook the escort, and then advanced
more slowly. The young man, seeing a long hill before them, proposed
to the young lady that they should walk. The friendly politeness of his
offer decided her, and her consent flattered him.

"Is Madame of our opinion?" she said, turning to Madame du Gua. "Will
she walk, too?"

"Coquette!" said the lady to herself, as she left the coach.

Marie and the young man walked together, but a little apart. The sailor,
full of ardent desires, was determined to break the reserve that checked
him, of which, however, he was not the dupe. He fancied that he could
succeed by dallying with the young lady in that tone of courteous
amiability and wit, sometimes frivolous, sometimes serious, which
characterized the men of the exiled aristocracy. But the smiling
Parisian beauty parried him so mischievously, and rejected his
frivolities with such disdain, evidently preferring the stronger ideas
and enthusiasms which he betrayed from time to time in spite of himself,
that he presently began to understand the true way of pleasing her. The
conversation then changed. He realized the hopes her expressive face had
given him; yet, as he did so, new difficulties arose, and he was still
forced to suspend his judgment on a girl who seemed to take delight in
thwarting him, a siren with whom he grew more and more in love. After
yielding to the seduction of her beauty, he was still more attracted
to her mysterious soul, with a curiosity which Marie perceived and took
pleasure in exciting. Their intercourse assumed, insensibly, a character
of intimacy far removed from the tone of indifference which Mademoiselle
de Verneuil endeavored in vain to give to it.

Though Madame du Gua had followed the lovers, the latter had
unconsciously walked so much more rapidly than she that a distance of
several hundred feet soon separated them. The charming pair trod the
fine sand beneath their feet, listening with childlike delight to the
union of their footstep