bles, and who
would have disinherited the daughter of a soldier of fortune, had been
flattered by the idea of writing in his last will the name of his niece,
the "high and mighty Countess Ville-Handry."

This unexpected piece of good-fortune ought to have delighted the
young wife. She might now have had her vengeance on all her miserable
slanderers, and enjoyed a boundless popularity. But far from it. She had
never appeared more sad than on the day when the great news reached her.

For on that very day she for the first time cursed her marriage. A
voice within her warned her that she ought never to have yielded to the
entreaties and the orders of her mother. An excellent daughter, as she
was to become the best of mothers, and the most faithful of wives, she
had sacrificed herself. And now an accident made all her sacrifices
useless, and punished her for having done her duty.

Ah, why had she not resisted, at least for the purpose of gaining time?

For when she was a girl she had dreamed of a very different future. Long
before giving herself to the count, she had, of her own free will, given
her heart to another. She had bestowed her first and warmest affections
upon a young man who was only two or three years older than she,--Peter
Champcey, the son of one of those marvellously rich farmers who live in
the valley of the Loire.

He worshipped her. Unfortunately one obstacle had risen between them
from the beginning,--Pauline's poverty. It could not be expected that
those keen, thrifty peasants, Champcey's father and mother, would ever
permit one of their sons--they had two--to commit the folly of making a
love-match.

They had worked hard for their children. The oldest, Peter, was to be a
lawyer; the other, Daniel, who wanted to become a sailor, was studying
day and night to prepare for his examination. And the old couple were
not a little proud of these "gentlemen," their sons. They told everybody
who would listen, that, in return for the costly education they were
giving them, they expected them to marry large fortunes.

Peter knew his parents so well, that he never mentioned Pauline to them.

"When I am of age," he said to himself, "it will be a different matter."

Alas! Why had not Pauline's mother waited at least till then?

Poor young girl! On the day on which she entered the castle of Ville-
Handry, she had sworn she would bury this love of hers so deep in
the innermost recesses of her heart, that it sho