son by whom it was
inspired. Well! I confess it: I have failed in this honesty. I came here
as a spy upon you, when your answer to the Abbe d'Aigrigny was giving me
a new pledge of your devotion and sincerity. I doubted your uprightness
at the moment when you were bearing testimony to my frankness. For
the first time in my life, I stooped to deceit; this weakness merits
punishment, and I submit to it--demands reparation, and I make it--calls
for apologies, and I tender them to you." Then turning towards Djalma,
she added: "Now, prince, I am no longer mistress of my secret. I am your
relation, Mdlle. de Cardoville; and I hope you will accept from a sister
the hospitality that you did not refuse from a mother."

Djalma made no reply. Plunged in ecstatic contemplation of this sudden
apparition, which surpassed his wildest and most dazzling visions, he
felt a sort of intoxication, which, paralyzing the power of thought,
concentrated all his faculties in the one sense of sight; and just as we
sometimes seek in vain to satisfy unquenchable thirst, the burning look
of the Indian sought, as it were, with devouring avidity, to take in
all the rare perfections of the young lady. Verily, never had two more
divine types of beauty met face to face. Adrienne and Djalma were the
very ideal of a handsome youth and maiden. There seemed to be something
providential in the meeting of these two natures, so young and so
vivacious, so generous and so full of passion, so heroic and so proud,
who, before coming into contact, had, singularly enough, each learned
the moral worth of the other; for if, at the words of Rodin, Djalma had
felt arise in his heart an admiration, as lively as it was sudden, for
the valiant and generous qualities of that unknown benefactress, whom
he now discovered in Mdlle. de Cardoville, the latter had, in her turn,
been moved, affected, almost terrified, by the interview she had just
overheard, in which Djalma had displayed the nobleness of his soul,
the delicate goodness of his heart, and the terrible transports of
his temper. Then she had not been able to repress a movement of
astonishment, almost admiration, at sight of the surprising beauty of
the prince; and soon after, a strange, painful sentiment, a sort
of electric shock, seemed to penetrate all her being, as her eyes
encountered Djalma's.

Cruelly agitated, and suffering deeply from this agitation, she tried
to dissemble the impression she had received, by a