r visitor was about fifty years of age, with iron-gray hair and
mustache, and a cold, severe cast of countenance; his expression was one
of haughty severity as he stood there in his full suit of black.

The agitated woman tried to discover in his face some traces of the
man whom she had so madly loved, who had pressed her to his heart, and
besought her to remain faithful until he should return from a foreign
land, and lay his fortune at her feet--the father of her son.

She was surprised to discover no resemblance to the youth whose memory
had haunted her life; no, never would she have recognized this stranger
as Gaston.

As he continued to stand motionless before her, she faintly murmured:

"Gaston!"

He sadly shook his head, and replied:

"I am not Gaston, madame. My brother succumbed to the misery and
suffering of exile: I am Louis de Clameran."

What! it was not Gaston, then, who had written to her; it was not Gaston
who stood before her!

She trembled with terror; her head whirled, and her eyes grew dim.

It was not he! And she had committed herself, betrayed her secret by
calling him "Gaston."

What could this man want?--this brother in whom Gaston had never
confided? What did he know of the past?

A thousand probabilities, each one more terrible than the other, flashed
across her brain.

Yet she succeeded in overcoming her weakness so that Louis scarcely
perceived it.

The fearful strangeness of her situation, the very imminence of peril,
inspired her with coolness and self-possession.

Haughtily pointing to a chair, she said to Louis with affected
indifference:

"Will you be kind enough, monsieur, to explain the object of this
unexpected visit?"

The marquis, seeming not to notice this sudden change of manner, took a
seat without removing his eyes from Mme. Fauvel's face.

"First of all, madame," he began, "I must ask if we can be overheard by
anyone?"

"Why this question? You can have nothing to say to me that my husband
and children should not hear."

Louis shrugged his shoulders, and said:

"Be good enough to answer me, madame; not for my sake, but for your
own."

"Speak, then, monsieur; you will not be heard."

In spite of this assurance, the marquis drew his chair close to the sofa
where Mme. Fauvel sat, so as to speak in a very low tone, as if almost
afraid to hear his own voice.

"As I told you, madame, Gaston is dead; and it was I who closed his
eyes, and received his last