o find out."

Conviction thus painfully obtained, Rodolph could only deplore the
dangerous position in which Madame d'Harville had placed herself, and
which seemed to him fraught with fresh evils, from a vague presentiment
of Sarah's being either a sharer or a confidant in the transaction, and
with this discovery came the fresh pain of believing that he had now
found out the source of M. d'Harville's secret sorrow; the man he so
highly esteemed, and for whom he felt a brother's regard, was pining in
silence over the misconduct of a wife he so tenderly loved, yet who, in
spite of her many charming qualities, could sacrifice her own and her
husband's happiness for the sake of an object so every way unworthy.
Master of so important a secret, yet incapable of betraying it, unable
to devise any plan to open the eyes of Madame d'Harville, who seemed
rather to yield to than resist her unlicensed passion for her lover,
Rodolph found himself obliged to remain a passive witness to the utter
ruin of a woman he had so passionately adored with as much silence as
devotion; nay, whom, spite of his best efforts, he still loved. He was
roused from these reflections by M. de Grauen.

"If your royal highness," said the baron, bowing, "will deign to grant
me a brief interview in one of the lower rooms, which is now quite
devoid of company, I shall have the honour to lay before you the
particulars you desired me to collect."

Rodolph signed to M. de Grauen to conduct him to the place named, when
the baron proceeded with his recital, as follows:

"The only duchess to whose name the initials 'N.' and 'L.' can possibly
belong is Madame de Lucenay, whose maiden name was Normant. Her grace is
not here this evening. I have just seen M. de Lucenay, her husband, who,
it seems, left Paris five months ago, with the expressed intention of
travelling in the East during the next year or two, but has unexpectedly
returned within the last day or two."

It may be recollected that, during Rodolph's visit to the Rue du Temple,
he picked up, on the landing-place adjoining the door of the charlatan
dentist's apartments, a cambric handkerchief, richly embroidered and
trimmed with costly lace, and bearing in the corner a ducal coronet with
the initials "N. L." It will also be borne in mind that this elegant
indication of high rank was wetted with the bitter tears of its noble
owner. In pursuance of his instructions, but in total ignorance of the
circumstanc