e, you know. Remember his manner when he left us to-night."

I was tempted to interpret this adventure as a trap, but as she noticed
the impression made by her words, she added:

"Oh, he was very much gayer when he was superintending the arrangement
of the cabinet I told you about. That was before my marriage. This
passage leads to my apartment. Alas! it testifies to the cunning
artifices to which Monsieur de T----- has resorted in protecting his
love for me."

"How pleasant it would be," I said to her, keenly excited by the
curiosity she had roused in me, "to take vengeance in this spot for the
insults which your charms have suffered, and to seek to make restitution
for the pleasures of which you have been robbed."

She doubtless thought this remark in good taste, but she said: "You
promised to be good!"

* * * * *

I threw a veil over the follies which every age will pardon to youth,
on the ground of so many balked desires and bitter memories. In the
morning, scarcely raising her liquid eyes, Madame de T-----, fairer than
ever, said to me:

"Now will you ever love the countess as much as you do me?"

I was about to answer when her maid, her confidante, appeared saying:

"You must go. It is broad daylight, eleven o'clock, and the chateau is
already awake."

All had vanished like a dream! I found myself wandering through the
corridors before I had recovered my senses. How could I regain my
apartment, not knowing where it was? Any mistake might bring about an
exposure. I resolved on a morning walk. The coolness of the fresh air
gradually tranquilized my imagination and brought me back to the world
of reality; and now instead of a world of enchantment I saw myself in my
soul, and my thoughts were no longer disturbed but followed each other
in connected order; in fact, I breathed once more. I was, above all
things, anxious to learn what I was to her so lately left--I who knew
that she had been desperately in love with the Marquis de V-----. Could
she have broken with him? Had she taken me to be his successor, or
only to punish him? What a night! What an adventure! Yes, and what a
delightful woman! While I floated on the waves of these thoughts, I
heard a sound near at hand. I raised my eyes, I rubbed them, I could not
believe my senses. Can you guess who it was? The Marquis de V-----!

"You did not expect to see me so early, did you?" he said. "How has it
all gone off?