my telling you. Permit me
to keep this secret, the only one I have ever kept from you."

Two tears trembled for a moment in the long lashes of the young girl,
and then silently rolled down her cheeks.

"I understand you," she stammered. "I understand but too well. Although
I know so little of life, I had a presentiment, as soon as I saw that
they were hiding something from me. Now I cannot doubt any longer. You
will go to see a woman to-morrow"--

"Dionysia," Jacques said with folded hands,--"Dionysia, I beseech you!"

She did not hear him. Gently shaking her heard, she went on,--

"A woman whom you have loved, or whom you love still, at whose feet you
have probably murmured the same words which you whispered at my feet.
How could you think of her in the midst of all your anxieties? She
cannot love you, I am sure. Why did she not come to you when she found
that you were in prison, and falsely accused of an abominable crime?"

Jacques cold bear it no longer.

"Great God!" he cried, "I would a thousand times rather tell you every
thing than allow such a suspicion to remain in your heart! Listen, and
forgive me."

But she stopped him, putting her hand on his lips, and saying, all in a
tremor,--

"No, I do not wish to know any thing,--nothing at all. I believe in
you. Only you must remember that you are every thing to me,--hope, life,
happiness. If you should have deceived me, I know but too well--poor
me!--that I would not cease loving you; but I should not have long to
suffer."

Overcome with grief and affection, Jacques repeated,--

"Dionysia, Dionysia, my darling, let me confess to you who this woman
is, and why I must see her."

"No," she interrupted him, "no! Do what your conscience bids you do. I
believe in you."

And instead of offering to let him kiss her forehead, as usual, she
hurried off with her Aunt Elizabeth, and that so quickly, that, when he
rushed after her, he only saw, as it were, a shadow at the end of the
long passage.

Never until this moment had Jacques found it in his heart really to hate
the Countess Claudieuse with that blind and furious hatred which dreams
of nothing but vengeance. Many a time, no doubt, he had cursed her in
the solitude of his prison; but even when he was most furious against
her, a feeling of pity had risen in his heart for her whom he had once
loved so dearly; for he did not disguise it to himself, he had once
loved her to distraction. Even in his prison he t