ering, resolved
to take his departure. There was none of the concealed vanity of a
coxcomb in this knowledge. He heartily deplored the injury he had
unwittingly done, and the sorry return he had made for all their
generous hospitality.

There was not a moment to be lost; but the very evening before, as they
walked together in the garden, she had confessed to him the misery in
which she lived by recounting the story of her ill-sorted marriage. What
it cost him to listen to that sad tale with seeming coldness--to hear
her afflictions without offering one word of kindness; nay, to proffer
merely some dry, harsh counsels of patience and submission, while
he added something very like rebuke for her want of that assiduous
affection which should have been given to her husband!

Unaccustomed to even the slightest censure, she could scarcely trust her
ears as she heard him. Had she humiliated herself, by such a confession,
to be met by advice like this? And was it he that should reproach her
for the very faults his own intimacy had engendered? She could not
endure the thought, and she felt that she could hate, just at the very
moment when she knew she loved him!

They parted in anger--reproaches, the most cutting and bitter, on her
part; coldness, far more wounding, on his! Sarcastic compliments upon
his generosity, replied to by as sincere expressions of respectful
friendship. What hypocrisy and self-deceit together! And yet deep
beneath all, lay the firm resolve for future victory. Her wounded
self-love was irritated, and she was not one to turn from an unfinished
purpose. As for him, he waited till all was still and silent in the
house, and then seeking out D'Aerschot's chamber, thanked him most
sincerely for all his kindness, and, affecting a hurried order to join
his service, departed. While in her morning dreams she was fancying
conquest, he was already miles away on the road to France.

*****

It was about three years after this, that a number of French officers
were seated one evening in front of a little cafe in Freyburg. The town
was then crammed with troops moving down to occupy the passes of the
Rhine, near the Lake of Constance, and every hour saw fresh arrivals
pouring in, dusty and wayworn from the march. The necessity for a sudden
massing of the troops in a particular spot compelled the generals to
employ every possible means of conveyance to forward the men to their
destination, and from the lumbering old