eturn to a life of vice and infamy, that I may put
an eternal barrier between us. I sacrifice both honor and fortune
to you. The pride I take in that sacrifice will support me in my
wretchedness,--fate may dispose of me as it will. I will never betray
you. I shall return to Paris. There your name will be to me a part of
myself, and the glory you win will console my grief. As for you, you are
a man, and you will forget me. Farewell."

She darted away in the direction of the gorges of Saint-Sulpice, and
disappeared before the marquis could rise to detain her. But she came
back unseen, hid herself in a cavity of the rocks, and examined the
young man with a curiosity mingled with doubt. Presently she saw him
walking like a man overwhelmed, without seeming to know where he went.

"Can he be weak?" she thought, when he had disappeared, and she felt
she was parted from him. "Will he understand me?" She quivered. Then
she turned and went rapidly towards Fougeres, as though she feared the
marquis might follow her into the town, where certain death awaited him.

"Francine, what did he say to you?" she asked, when the faithful girl
rejoined her.

"Ah! Marie, how I pitied him. You great ladies stab a man with your
tongues."

"How did he seem when he came up to you?"

"As if he saw me not at all! Oh, Marie, he loves you!"

"Yes, he loves me, or he does not love me--there is heaven or hell for
me in that," she answered. "Between the two extremes there is no spot
where I can set my foot."

After thus carrying out her resolution, Marie gave way to grief, and her
face, beautified till then by these conflicting sentiments, changed
for the worse so rapidly that in a single day, during which she floated
incessantly between hope and despair, she lost the glow of beauty, and
the freshness which has its source in the absence of passion or the
ardor of joy. Anxious to ascertain the result of her mad enterprise,
Hulot and Corentin came to see her soon after her return. She received
them smiling.

"Well," she said to the commandant, whose care-worn face had a
questioning expression, "the fox is coming within range of your guns;
you will soon have a glorious triumph over him."

"What happened?" asked Corentin, carelessly, giving Mademoiselle de
Verneuil one of those oblique glances with which diplomatists of his
class spy on thought.

"Ah!" she said, "the Gars is more in love than ever; I made him come
with me to the gates of Fouger