tudied to please him, and she
looked lovely indeed. The room was gay with flowers as if for a
festivity; the dinner was exquisite. For the grey-headed Vidame the
Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit; she was more charming
than she had ever been before. At first the Vidame tried to look on
all these preparations as a young woman's jest; but now and again the
attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin's charm was
broken. He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and
once she seemed to listen during a pause.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Hush!" she said.

At seven o'clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes. When she came
back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey.
She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a
hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de
Montriveau's door.

Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--

"MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away. This cannot
be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show itself quite
differently. If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will
kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be
in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling
towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then
I give up all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will
have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me
in my long sorrow. Regrets? Oh, my Armand, may I never know of them; if
I thought that I had caused you a single regret----But, no, I will not
tell you what desolation I should feel. I should be living still, and I
could not be your wife; it would be too late!

"Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else
should I give myself?--to God. The eyes that you loved for a little
while shall never look on another man's face; and may the glory of God
blind them to all besides. I shall never hear human voices more since I
heard yours--so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems
to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And now
may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend,
there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and
prayers.

"Perhaps you wonder why