it was Mademoiselle Kayser
herself.

Marianne? Marianne on the edge of this Lake at an hour when there was
no one at the Bois? Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in
predestination. Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary,
but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path
the being about whom one has just been thinking. He had frequently
observed this fact. He had already descended from his carriage to go to
her, taking a little pathway under the furze in order to reach the
water's edge. There was no longer any doubt, it was she. Evidently he
was to meet Mademoiselle Kayser some day. But how could chance will that
he should desire to take that promenade to the Lake at the very hour
that the young woman had driven there?

As he advanced, he thought how surprised Marianne would be. As he walked
along, he looked at her.

She stood near a kind of wooden landing jutting out over the water. Over
her black dress she had flung a short cloak of satin, embroidered with
jet which sparkled in the sunlight. The light wind gently waved a black
feather that hung from her hat, in which other feathers were entwined
with a fringe of old gold bullion. Vaudrey noted every detail of this
living statuette of a Parisian woman: between a little veil knotted
behind her head and the lace ruching of her cloak, light, golden curls
fell on her neck, and in that frame of light, this elegant woman, this
silhouette standing out in full relief against the sky and the horizon
line of the water, with a pencil of rays gilding her fair locks, seemed
more exquisite and more the "woman" to Sulpice than in the decollete
of a ball costume.

When she heard the crushing of the sand by Sulpice's footsteps as he
approached her with timid haste, she turned abruptly. Under her small
black veil, drawn tightly over her face, and whose dots looked like so
many patches on her face, Vaudrey at first observed Marianne's almost
sickly paleness, then her suddenly joyous glance. A furtive blush
mounted even to the young girl's cheek.

"You here?" she said--"you, Monsieur le Ministre?"

She had already imparted an entirely different tone to these questions.
There was more abandon in the first, which seemed more like a cry, but
the second betrayed a sudden politeness, perhaps a little affected.

Vaudrey replied by some commonplace remark. It was a fine day; he was
tired; he wished to warm himself in this early sunshine. But