res.

Recalling my early dreams of pleasures I knew nothing of, expressed at
Clochegourde in my "selams," the voice of my flowers, pleasures which
the union of souls renders all the more ardent, I found many sophistries
by which I excused to myself the delight with which I drained that
jewelled cup. Often, when, lost in infinite lassitude, my soul
disengaged itself from the body and floated far from earth, I thought
that these pleasures might be the means of abolishing matter and of
rendering to the spirit its power to soar. Sometimes Lady Dudley, like
other women, profited by the exaltation in which I was to bind me by
promises; under the lash of a desire she wrung blasphemies from my lips
against the angel at Clochegourde. Once a traitor I became a scoundrel.
I continued to write to Madame de Mortsauf, in the tone of the lad she
had first known in his strange blue coat; but, I admit it, her gift of
second-sight terrified me when I thought what ruin the indiscretion of a
word might bring to the dear castle of my hopes. Often, in the midst
of my pleasure a sudden horror seized me; I heard the name of Henriette
uttered by a voice above me, like that in the Scriptures, demanding:
"Cain, where is thy brother Abel?"

At last my letters remained unanswered. I was seized with horrible
anxiety and wished to leave for Clochegourde. Arabella did not oppose
it, but she talked of accompanying me to Touraine. Her woman's wit told
her that the journey might be a means of finally detaching me from her
rival; while I, blind with fear and guilelessly unsuspicious, did not
see the trap she set for me. Lady Dudley herself proposed the humblest
concessions. She would stay near Tours, at a little country-place,
alone, disguised; she would refrain from going out in the day-time, and
only meet me in the evening when people were not likely to be about.
I left Tours on horseback. I had my reasons for this; my evening
excursions to meet her would require a horse, and mine was an Arab which
Lady Hester Stanhope had sent to the marchioness, and which she had
lately exchanged with me for that famous picture of Rembrandt which I
obtained in so singular a way, and which now hangs in her drawing-room
in London. I took the road I had traversed on foot six years earlier and
stopped beneath my walnut-tree. From there I saw Madame de Mortsauf in
a white dress standing at the edge of the terrace. Instantly I rode
towards her with the speed of lightning,