s of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable
virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, Vicomte de
Bragelonne.

But the third week found Duchemin mending all too rapidly; the time
came too soon when the word "to-morrow" held for him all the dread
significance, he assured himself, that it holds for a condemned man on
the eve of execution.

To-morrow the detectives commissioned by Madame de Montalais's bankers
would arrive. To-morrow Eve would set out on her journey to Paris.
To-morrow Andre Duchemin must walk forth from the Chateau de Montalais
and turn his back on all that was most dear to him in life.

On that last day he saw even less of Eve than usual. She was naturally
busy with preparations for her trip, a trifle excited, too; it would be
only the third time she had left the chateau for as long as overnight
since returning to it after her husband's death. When Duchemin did see
her, she seemed at once exhilarated and subdued, and he thought to
detect in her attitude toward him a trace of apprehensiveness.

She knew, of course; Duchemin at thirty-eight was too well versed in
lore of women to dream he had succeeded in keeping his secret from the
fine intuition of one of thirty. But--he told himself a bit
bitterly--she ought to know him well enough by this time to know more,
that she need not fear he would ever speak his heart to her. The social
gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a
miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivete of
soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if
it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in
the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could only
seem silly....

He was permitted to be about the house in the afternoon and to dine
with Eve and Louise in the draughty, shadow-haunted dining hall. Madame
de Sevenie was indisposed and kept to her room; she suffered from time
to time from an affection of the heart, nothing remarkable in one of
her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings. But the
presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the
others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which
Duchemin's attempts at levity could not prevail. The talk languished
and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic
offered itself. The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue. It
happen