husband's
name; how strangely we meet in this life. I am truly astonished at my
want of presentiment which never foretold me by a sign from heaven or
from earth that I should find you here."

"A special motive caused me to undertake this journey," she hastily
said. "I intend to put my son to school and I am told that there is one
here in which he will be well taken care of. I arrived to-day after
having spent a sleepless night in the carriage, and I must confess to
you that just as you came up, weak human nature, against all good
breeding, was on the point of making up for lost time. I tell you this
because the cool, and absent way in which I received you must have
seemed strange to so old a friend."

She stretched out her hand to him. "I thank you," he replied, and his
face brightened, "for having remembered my small claim on your
friendship. Pray continue to treat me on the old footing, and resume
your repose, which I unfortunately disturbed. I will take care that no
one enters the bower: I can keep watch behind this palm-tree."

She laughed. "No, I did not mean that. I am only too tired to converse
with perfect strangers. Come, sit down by me, if you will be satisfied
with my good intentions, and tell me how the past, and the present have
fared with you."

"You will best be able to judge for yourself how it has fared with me
when I confide to you my situation at the present moment. My friend has
only invited me here for the sake of marrying me. He regards it as a
duty. What do you say to that? In what a sad state must not that man be
whose friends consider it their duty to render him harmless?"

"You alarm me," she replied with a smile. "When I first knew you, you
were, if not actually harmless, at least far from causing so much
mischief that you had to be laid in chains for the sake of the public
safety."

"You are deriding me, Madam. Ah that talent of yours, how well I know
it. This time however your darts did not touch me. My charitable cousin
fears not for others, but for my own safety. He believes that if I
continue to reside alone in the old castle which I have bought;
abandoned to my own crotchets, only occupied in catching hares and
helping the peasants in their agricultural affairs, which I do not
myself understand, that I should sooner or later lose the little sense
which he kindly presumes is left to me. You see he wishes to treat me
homeopathically, dispersing one folly by another. Perhaps he is r