scattered upon the last two years of her childhood,--years that
were rich in treasures now buried forever in her heart.

The vision brought her suddenly to that morning, that ravishing morning,
when in the grand old parlor panelled and carved in oak, which served
the family as a dining-room, she saw her handsome cousin for the first
time. Alarmed by the seditions in Paris, her mother's family had sent
the young courtier to Rouen, hoping that he could there be trained to
the duties of the magistracy by his uncle, whose office might some day
devolve upon him. The countess smiled involuntarily as she remembered
the haste with which she retired on seeing this relation whom she did
not know. But, in spite of the rapidity with which she opened and
shut the door, a single glance had put into her soul so vigorous an
impression of the scene that even at this moment she seemed to see it
still occurring. Her eye again wandered from the violet velvet mantle
embroidered with gold and lined with satin to the spurs on the boots,
the pretty lozenges slashed into the doublet, the trunk-hose, and the
rich collaret which gave to view a throat as white as the lace around
it. She stroked with her hand the handsome face with its tiny pointed
moustache, and "royale" as small as the ermine tips upon her father's
hood.

In the silence of the night, with her eyes fixed on the green silk
curtains which she no longer saw, the countess, forgetting the storm,
her husband, and her fears, recalled the days which seemed to her
longer than years, so full were they,--days when she loved, and was
beloved!--and the moment when, fearing her mother's sternness, she
had slipped one morning into her father's study to whisper her girlish
confidences on his knee, waiting for his smile at her caresses to say
in his ear, "Will you scold me if I tell you something?" Once more she
heard her father say, after a few questions in reply to which she spoke
for the first time of her love, "Well, well, my child, we will think
of it. If he studies well, if he fits himself to succeed me, if he
continues to please you, I will be on your side."

After that she had listened no longer; she had kissed her father, and,
knocking over his papers as she ran from the room, she flew to the great
linden-tree where, daily, before her formidable mother rose, she met
that charming cousin, Georges de Chaverny.

Faithfully the youth promised to study law and customs. He laid aside
the s