ue. Laurence, when, on the day that she became enamoured
of Tremorel, she permitted him to press her hand, and kept it from
her mother, was lost. The hand-pressure led to the pretence of
suicide in order to fly with her lover. It might also lead to
infanticide.

Poor Laurence, when she was left alone by Hector's departure to the
Faubourg St. Germain, on receiving M. Lecoq's letter, began to
reflect upon the events of the past year. How unlooked-for and
rapidly succeeding they had been! It seemed to her that she had
been whirled along in a tempest, without a second to think or act
freely. She asked herself if she were not a prey to some hideous
nightmare, and if she should not presently awake in her pretty
maidenly chamber at Orcival. Was it really she who was there in
a strange house, dead to everyone, leaving behind a withered memory,
reduced to live under a false name, without family or friends
henceforth, or anyone in the world to help her feebleness, at the
mercy of a fugitive like herself, who was free to break to-morrow
the bonds of caprice which to-day bound him to her? Was it she,
too, who was about to become a mother, and found herself suffering
from the excessive misery of blushing for that maternity which is
the pride of pure young wives? A thousand memories of her past
life flocked through her brain and cruelly revived her despair.
Her heart sank as she thought of her old friendships, of her mother,
her sister, the pride of her innocence, and the pure joys of the
home fireside.

As she half reclined on a divan in Hector's library, she wept
freely. She bewailed her life, broken at twenty, her lost youth,
her vanished, once radiant hopes, the world's esteem, and her own
self-respect, which she should never recover.

Of a sudden the door was abruptly opened.

Laurence thought it was Hector returned, and she hastily rose,
passing her handkerchief across her face to try to conceal her
tears.

A man whom she did not know stood upon the threshold, respectfully
bowing. She was afraid, for Tremorel had said to her many times
within the past two days, "We are pursued; let us hide well;" and
though it seemed to her that she had nothing to fear, she trembled
without knowing why.

"Who are you?" she asked, haughtily, "and who has admitted you here?
What do you want?"

M. Lecoq left nothing to chance or inspiration; he foresaw
everything, and regulated affairs in real life as he would the
scenes in a theatre.