have become of us without the aid of
this gentleman?"

Before arriving at Angers, Gaston inquired at what hotel they were going
to stay, and, finding that it was the same at which he intended to put
up, he sent Owen on before to engage apartments.

When they arrived, he received a note, which Helene had written during
dinner. She spoke of her love and happiness as though they were secure
and everlasting.

But Gaston looked on the future in its true light. Bound by an oath to
undertake a terrible mission, he foresaw sad misfortunes after their
present short-lived joy. He remembered that he was about to lose
happiness, just as he had tasted it for the first time, and rebelled
against his fate. He did not remember that he had sought that conspiracy
which now bound him, and which forced him to pursue a path leading to
exile or the scaffold, while he had in sight another path which would
lead him direct to happiness.

It is true that when Gaston joined the conspiracy he did not know
Helene, and thought himself alone in the world. At twenty years of age
he had believed that the world had no pleasure for him; then he had met
Helene, and the world became full of pleasure and hope: but it was too
late; he had already entered on a career from which he could not draw
back.

Meanwhile, in the preoccupation of his mind, Gaston had quite forgotten
his suspicions of Owen, and had not noticed that he had spoken to two
cavaliers similar to the one whom he had seen the first evening; but
Owen lost nothing of what passed between Gaston and Helene.

As they approached the end of their journey, Gaston became sad; and when
the landlord at Chartres replied to the question of Sister Therese,
"To-morrow you may, if you choose, reach Rambouillet," it was as though
he had said, "To-morrow you separate forever."

Helene, who loved as women love, with the strength, or rather the
weakness, to sacrifice everything to that love, could not understand
Gaston's passive submission to the decrees of Providence, and she would
have preferred to have seen him make some effort to combat them.

But Helene was in this unjust to Gaston; the same ideas tormented him.
He knew that at a word from him Helene would follow him to the end of
the world--he had plenty of gold--it would be easy for Helene one
evening, instead of going to rest, to go with him into a post-chaise,
and in two days they would be beyond the frontier, free and happy, not
for a day or a