. To me, though a relation, Louise
Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute
your right to say, 'Talk of her no more.' You loved her, and she wronged
you. My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh."

These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened
Louvier towards the speaker.

After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if
to dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then with
a changed expression of countenance,--an expression frank and
winning,--with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the
irony or the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of
his reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier's, and resumed:
"Our situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became
friends. I then could say, 'Open sesame' to whatever recesses, forbidden
to vulgar footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might
wish to explore. In those days my heart was warm; I liked you,
Louvier,--honestly liked you. I think our personal acquaintance
commenced in some gay gathering of young viveurs, whose behaviour to you
offended my sense of good breeding?"

Louvier coloured and muttered inaudibly. De Mauleon continued: "I felt
it due to you to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you evinced
on that occasion your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to
add, with no lack of becoming spirit."

Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified.

"From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to me were
incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. On more than one
occasion when I was rapidly wasting money--and money was plentiful with
you--you generously offered me your purse. On more than one occasion I
accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had
not insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid." Louvier
made a movement as if to extend his hand, but he checked the impulse.

"There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized
in your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I
imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the freluquets
and lions who were my more habitual associates. Do you not remember
some hours of serious talk we have had together when we lounged in
the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais
Royal?--hours when we forgot that those wer