y son, for it is
impossible to know him without taking the warmest interest in him."

"It would be singular," returned Adrienne, with redoubled coldness, and
still more bitter irony, "if my love--admitting I were in love--could
have any such strange influence on Prince Djalma. What can it matter to
him?" added she, with almost agonizing disdain.

"What can it matter to him? Now really, my dear friend, permit me to tell
you, that it is you who are jesting cruelly. What! this unfortunate youth
loves you with all the blind ardor of a first love--twice has attempted
to terminate by suicide the horrible tortures of his passion--and you
think it strange that your love for another should be with him a question
of life or death!"

"He loves me then?" cried the young girl, with an accent impossible to
describe.

"He loves you to madness, I tell you; I have seen it."

Adrienne seemed overcome with amazement. From pale, she became crimson;
as the redness disappeared, her lips grew white, and trembled. Her
emotion was so strong, that she remained for some moments unable to
speak, and pressed her hand to her heart, as if to moderate its
pulsations.

M. de Montbron, almost frightened at the sudden change in Adrienne's
countenance, hastily approached her, exclaiming: "Good heaven, my poor
child! what is the matter?"

Instead of answering, Adrienne waved her hand to him, in sign that he
should not be alarmed; and, in fact, the count was speedily
tranquillized, for the beautiful face, which had so lately been
contracted with pain, irony, and scorn, seemed now expressive of the
sweetest and most ineffable emotions; Adrienne appeared to luxuriate in
delight, and to fear losing the least particle of it; then, as reflection
told her, that she was, perhaps, the dupe of illusion or falsehood, she
exclaimed suddenly, with anguish, addressing herself to M. de Montbron:
"But is what you tell me true?"

"What I tell you!"

"Yes--that Prince Djalma--"

"Loves you to madness?--Alas! it is only too true."

"No, no," cried Adrienne, with a charming expression of simplicity; "that
could never be too true."

"What do you say?" cried the count.

"But that woman?" asked Adrienne, as if the word scorched her lips.

"What woman?"

"She who has been the cause of all these painful struggles."

"That woman--why, who should it be but you?"

"What, I? Oh! tell me, was it I?"

"On my word of honor. I trust my experience. I have never seen