affection. I was bitter with myself, and I suffered oh, so much! Then
later, when I was in the rose garden, you came to me.

"You remember how you seized me, and how by your manner you showed
me that it was not vanity alone had misled me. You had fooled me, I
thought; even in that hour I imagined you were fooling me; you made
light of me; and my sufferings were naught to you so that I might give
you some amusement to pass the leisure and monotony of your sojourn with
us."

"Roxalanne--my poor Roxalanne!" I whispered.

"Then my bitterness and sorrow all turned to anger against you. You had
broken my heart, and I thought that you had done it wantonly. For that I
burned to punish you. Ah! and not only that, perhaps. I think, too, that
some jealousy drove me on. You had wooed and slighted me, yet you had
made me love you, and if you were not for me I swore you should be
for no other. And so, while my madness endured, I quitted Lavedan, and
telling my father that I was going to Auch, to his sister's house, I
came to Toulouse and betrayed you to the Keeper of the Seals.

"Scarce was the thing done than I beheld the horror of it, and I hated
myself. In my despair, I abandoned all idea of pursuing the journey
to Auch, but turned and made my way back in haste, hoping that I might
still come to warn you. But at Grenade I met you already in charge of
the soldiers. At Grenade, too I learnt the truth--that you were not
Lesperon. Can you not guess something of my anguish then? Already
loathing my act, and beside myself for having betrayed you, think into
what despair I was plunged by Monsieur de Marsac's intimation.

"Then I understood that for reasons of your own you had concealed your
identity. You were not perhaps, betrothed; indeed, I remembered then
how, solemnly you had sworn that you were not; and so I bethought me
that your vows to me may have been sincere and such as a maid might
honourably listen to."

"They were, Roxalanne! they were!" I cried.

But she continued "That you had Mademoiselle de Marsac's portrait was
something that I could not explain; but then I hear that you had also
Lesperon's papers upon you; so that you may have become possessed of the
one with the others. And now, monsieur--"

She ceased, and there against my breast she lay weeping and weeping
in her bitter passion of regret, until it seemed to me she would never
regain her self-control.

"It has been all my fault, Roxalanne," said I, "and i