heek flushed, and his eye gleamed, and he waved
his hat feebly over his head, "hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

"Oh, don't!--don't!--don't!" cried Rose wild with pity and dismay.

"How can I help?--I am mad with joy--hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"

"No! no! no! no! no!"

"What is the matter?"

"And must I stab you worse than all your enemies have stabbed you?"
sighed Rose, and tears of womanly pity now streamed down her cheeks.

Camille's mind began to misgive him. What was become of Josephine? she
did not appear. He faltered out, "Your mother is well; all are well
I hope. Oh, where is she?" and receiving no reply, began to tremble
visibly with the fear of some terrible calamity.

Rose, with a sister fainting close by, and this poor lover trembling
before her, lost all self-command, and began to wring her hands and cry
wildly. "Camille," she almost screamed, "there is but one thing for you
to do; leave Beaurepaire on the instant: fly from it; it is no place for
you."

"She is dead," said Camille, very quietly.

When he said that, with an unnatural and monotonous calm such as
precedes deliberate suicide, it flashed in one moment across Rose that
it was much best he should think so.

She did not reply; but she drooped her head and let him think it.

"She would have come to me ere this if she was alive," said he. "You
are all in white: they mourn in white for angels like her, that go to
heaven, virgins. Oh! I was blind. You might have told me at once; you
see I can bear it. What does it matter to one who loves as I love? It is
only to give her one more proof I lived only for her. I would have died
a hundred times but for my promise to her. Yes, I am coming, love; I am
coming."

He fell on his knees and smiled, and whispered, "I am coming, Josephine,
I am coming."

A sob and a moan as of a creature dying in anguish answered him.

Rose screamed with terror when she heard it.

Camille rose to his feet, awestruck. "That was her voice, behind this
tree," he whispered.

"No, no," cried Rose; "it was me."

But at that moment a rustle and a rush was heard of some one darting out
of the tree.

Camille darted furiously round it in the same direction. Rose tried to
stop him, but was too late. The next moment Raynal's wife was in his
arms.

CHAPTER X.

Josephine wrestled long and terribly with nature in that old oak-tree.
But who can so struggle forever? Anguish, remorse, horror, despair, and
love wrenched her to