as it was
high tide, they drove right up to the harbour wharf.

The ship had just loosed her moorings, and was gliding out to sea.
Clorinde could recognise Melladoro standing amid the passengers on deck.
Half fainting, she stretched out her arms and called him in a piteous
voice. Blushing, he sought to hide behind his companions, who all begged
him to show himself. By means of a wherry Clorinde soon reached the
frigate, and the good-natured sailors helped her to climb up the side of
the vessel. But in her agitation and bewilderment her foot slipped, and
she fell into the sea, whence she was soon rescued by several of the
pluckiest of the crew.

As she was being removed to her carriage, the vessel sailed out of
harbour. M. de Nesmond took a large house at Havre, in order to nurse
her with greater convenience, and had to stop there for a whole month,
his wife being at length brought back on a litter to Paris.

Her convalescence was but an illusion after all. Hardly had she reached
home when fatal symptoms appeared; she felt that she must die, but showed
little concern thereat. The portrait of the handsome Spaniard lay close
beside her on her couch. She smiled at it, besought it to have pity on
her loneliness, or scolded it bitterly for indifference, and for going
away.

A short time before her death, she sent for her husband and her father,
to whom she entrusted the care of her three children.

"Monsieur," said she to the President de Nesmond, "be kind to my son; he
has a right to your name and arms, and though he is my living image,
dearest Theodore is your son." Then turning to her father, who was
weeping, she said briefly, "All that to-day remains to you of Clorinde
are her two daughters.

"Pray love them as you loved me, and be more strict with them than you
were with me. M. de Nesmond owes these orphans nothing. All that
Melladoro owes them is affection. Tell him, I pray you, of my constancy
and of my death."

Such was the sad end of a young wife who committed no greater crime than
to love a man who was agreeable and after her own heart. M. de Nesmond
was just enough to admit that, in ill-assorted unions, good sense or good
nature must intervene, to ensure that the one most to be pitied receive
indulgent treatment at the hands of the most culpable, if the latter be
also the stronger of the two.

CHAPTER L.

Madame de Montespan's Children and Those of La Valliere.--Monsieur le
Dauphin.