s not the weary plodder of 1814. Then my heart was full of eager
desires, now my eyes were full of tears; once my life was all before
me to fill as I could, now I knew it to be a desert. I was still
young,--only twenty-nine,--but my heart was withered. A few years had
sufficed to despoil that landscape of its early glory, and to disgust
me with life. You can imagine my feelings when, on turning round, I saw
Madeleine on the terrace.

A prey to imperious sadness, I gave no thought to the end of my journey.
Lady Dudley was far, indeed, from my mind, and I entered the courtyard
of her house without reflection. The folly once committed, I was forced
to carry it out. My habits were conjugal in her house, and I went
upstairs thinking of the annoyances of a rupture. If you have fully
understood the character and manners of Lady Dudley, you can imagine
my discomfiture when her majordomo ushered me, still in my travelling
dress, into a salon where I found her sumptuously dressed and surrounded
by four persons. Lord Dudley, one of the most distinguished old
statesmen of England, was standing with his back to the fireplace,
stiff, haughty, frigid, with the sarcastic air he doubtless wore in
parliament; he smiled when he heard my name. Arabella's two children,
who were amazingly like de Marsay (a natural son of the old lord), were
near their mother; de Marsay himself was on the sofa beside her. As
soon as Arabella saw me she assumed a distant air, and glanced at my
travelling cap as if to ask what brought me there. She looked me
over from head to foot, as though I were some country gentlemen just
presented to her. As for our intimacy, that eternal passion, those vows
of suicide if I ceased to love her, those visions of Armida, all had
vanished like a dream. I had never clasped her hand; I was a stranger;
she knew me not. In spite of the diplomatic self-possession to which
I was gradually being trained, I was confounded; and all others in my
place would have felt the same. De Marsay smiled at his boots, which
he examined with remarkable interest. I decided at once upon my course.
From any other woman I should modestly have accepted my defeat; but,
outraged at the glowing appearance of the heroine who had vowed to
die for love, and who had scoffed at the woman who was really dead,
I resolved to meet insolence with insolence. She knew very well the
misfortunes of Lady Brandon; to remind her of them was to send a dagger
to her heart, t