nor the right to yield to her feelings.
Father Poignot was doubtless, even then, awaiting her at the rendezvous.

She lifted the hearth-stone, and found the sum of money which
Chanlouineau had named.

The next morning, when he awoke, the abbe received the money.

Now, Marie-Anne could breathe freely; and this peace, after so many
trials and agitations, seemed to her almost happiness.

Faithful to the abbe's instructions, she lived alone; but, by frequent
visits, she accustomed the people of the neighborhood to her presence.

Yes, she would have been almost happy, could she have had news of
Maurice. What had become of him? Why did he give no sign of life? What
would she not have given in exchange for some word of counsel and of
love from him?

The time was fast approaching when she would require a confidant; and
there was no one in whom she could confide.

In this hour of extremity, when she really felt that her reason was
failing her, she remembered the old physician at Vigano, who had been
one of the witnesses to her marriage.

"He would help me if I called upon him for aid," she thought.

She had no time to temporize or to reflect; she wrote to him
immediately, giving the letter in charge of a youth in the neighborhood.

"The gentleman says you may rely upon him," said the messenger on his
return.

That very evening Marie-Anne heard someone rap at her door. It was the
kind-hearted old man who had come to her relief.

He remained at the Borderie nearly a fortnight.

When he departed one morning, before daybreak, he took away with him
under his large cloak an infant--a boy--whom he had sworn to cherish as
his own child.

CHAPTER XLII

To quit Sairmeuse without any display of violence had cost Blanche an
almost superhuman effort.

The wildest anger convulsed her soul at the very moment, when, with
an assumption of melancholy dignity, she murmured those words of
forgiveness.

Ah! had she obeyed the dictates of her resentment!

But her indomitable vanity aroused within her the heroism of a gladiator
dying on the arena, with a smile upon his lips.

Falling, she intended to fall gracefully.

"No one shall see me weep; no one shall hear me complain," she said to
her despondent father; "try to imitate me."

And on her return to the Chateau de Courtornieu, she was a stoic.

Her face, although pale, was as immobile as marble, beneath the curious
gaze of the servants.

"I am to be called mademoi