t had won me some of the
daughter's regard gained me also no little of the mother's.

She had been attached to the Chevalier until my coming. But what did the
Chevalier know of the great world compared with what I could tell? Her
love of scandal drew her to me with inquiries upon this person and that
person, many of them but names to her.

My knowledge and wealth of detail--for all that I curbed it lest I
should seem to know too much--delighted her prurient soul. Had she been
more motherly, this same knowledge that I exhibited should have made her
ponder what manner of life I had led, and should have inspired her
to account me no fit companion for her daughter. But a selfish woman,
little inclined to be plagued by the concerns of another--even when that
other was her daughter--she left things to the destructive course that
they were shaping.

And so everything--if we except perhaps the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache--conspired to the advancement of my suit, in a manner
that must have made Chatellerault grind his teeth in rage if he could
have witnessed it, but which made me grind mine in despair when I
pondered the situation in detail.

One evening--I had been ten days at the chateau--we went a half-league
or so up the Garonne in a boat, she and I. As we were returning,
drifting with the stream, the oars idle in my hand, I spoke of leaving
Lavedan.

She looked up quickly; her expression was almost of alarm, and her eyes
dilated as they met mine--for, as I have said, she was all unversed in
the ways of her sex, and by nature too guileless to attempt to disguise
her feelings or dissemble them.

"But why must you go so soon?" she asked. "You are safe at Lavedan, and
abroad you may be in danger. It was but two days ago that they took
a poor young gentleman of these parts at Pau; so that you see the
persecution is not yet ended. Are you"--and her voice trembled ever so
slightly--"are you weary of us, monsieur?"

I shook my head at that, and smiled wistfully.

"Weary?" I echoed. "Surely, mademoiselle, you do not think it? Surely
your heart must tell you something very different?"

She dropped her eyes before the passion of my gaze. And when presently
she answered me, there was no guile in her words; there were the
dictates of the intuitions of her sex, and nothing more.

"But it is possible, monsieur. You are accustomed to the great world--"

"The great world of Lesperon, in Gascony?" I interrupted.

"No, no; the