; I cultivate your heart."

I try to recall this intoxicating babble, that I may picture to you the
woman as she is, confirm all I have said of her, and let you into
the secret of what happened later. But how shall I describe the
accompaniment of the words? She sought to annihilate by the passion of
her impetuous love the impressions left in my heart by the chaste and
dignified love of my Henriette. Lady Dudley had seen the countess as
plainly as the countess had seen her; each had judged the other. The
force of Arabella's attack revealed to me the extent of her fear, and
her secret admiration for her rival. In the morning I found her with
tearful eyes, complaining that she had not slept.

"What troubles you?" I said.

"I fear that my excessive love will ruin me," she answered; "I have
given all. Wiser than I, that woman possesses something that you still
desire. If you prefer her, forget me; I will not trouble you with my
sorrows, my remorse, my sufferings; no, I will go far away and die, like
a plant deprived of the life-giving sun."

She was able to wring protestations of love from my reluctant lips,
which filled her with joy.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, drying her eyes, "I am happy. Go back to her; I do
not choose to owe you to the force of my love, but to the action of your
own will. If you return here I shall know that you love me as much as I
love you, the possibility of which I have always doubted."

She persuaded me to return to Clochegourde. The false position in which
I thus placed myself did not strike me while still under the influence
of her wiles. Yet, had I refused to return I should have given Lady
Dudley a triumph over Henriette. Arabella would then have taken me
to Paris. To go now to Clochegourde was an open insult to Madame de
Mortsauf; in that case Arabella was sure of me. Did any woman ever
pardon such crimes against love? Unless she were an angel descended
from the skies, instead of a purified spirit ascending to them, a loving
woman would rather see her lover die than know him happy with another.
Thus, look at it as I would, my situation, after I had once left
Clochegourde for the Grenadiere, was as fatal to the love of my choice
as it was profitable to the transient love that held me. Lady Dudley had
calculated all this with consummate cleverness. She owned to me later
that if she had not met Madame de Mortsauf on the moor she had intended
to compromise me by haunting Clochegourde until she did