Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and
listen,--reseat yourself, I say."

Louvier dropped into his chair.

"No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you,
neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I
ask Monsieur Louvier what has become of Louise Duval?"

"Louise Duval! I know nothing about her."

"Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted,
to be a candidate for her hand. You did know her enough to solicit my
good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit
Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle."

"What! have you, Monsieur de Mauleon, not heard news of her since that
day?"

"I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. You went
to Aix-la-Chapelle; you saw Louise Duval, at my urgent request she
condescended to accept your hand."

"No, Monsieur de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand. I did not even see
her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it,--not
alone,--left it with her lover."

"Her lover! You do not mean the miserable Englishman who--"

"No Englishman," interrupted Louvier, fiercely. "Enough that the step
she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never
even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the
one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to
madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound,
Monsieur le Vicomte."

"Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen
and so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters
belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise
forsake you?"

"It matters not; he is dead."

"I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you."

"I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass."

"Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I
can scarcely believe it."

"Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled; her pride would not have
allowed that."

"He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?"

"That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of
her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very
few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of
her no more."

"Ay, ay," muttered De Mauleon, "some disgraces are not to be redeemed,
and therefore not to be discussed