ay, once
more. The days were lovely, though short in duration, and M. de la
Tourelle had occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate the
superintendence of which so frequently took him away from home. He took
Lefebvre with him, and possibly some more of the lacqueys; he often
did. And my spirits rose a little at the thought of his absence; and
then the new sensation that he was the father of my unborn babe came
over me, and I tried to invest him with this fresh character. I tried
to believe that it was his passionate love for me that made him so
jealous and tyrannical, imposing, as he did, restrictions on my very
intercourse with my dear father, from whom I was so entirely separated,
as far as personal intercourse was concerned.

I had, it is true, let myself go into a sorrowful review of all the
troubles which lay hidden beneath the seeming luxury of my life. I knew
that no one cared for me except my husband and Amante; for it was clear
enough to see that I, as his wife, and also as a _parvenue_, was not
popular among the few neighbours who surrounded us; and as for the
servants; the women were all hard and impudent-looking, treating me
with a semblance of respect that had more of mockery than reality in
it; while the men had a lurking kind of fierceness about them,
sometimes displayed even to M. de la Tourelle, who on his part, it must
be confessed, was often severe even to cruelty in his management of
them. My husband loved me, I said to myself, but I said it almost in
the form of a question. His love was shown fitfully, and more in ways
calculated to please himself than to please me. I felt that for no wish
of mine would he deviate one tittle from any predetermined course of
action. I had learnt the inflexibility of those thin delicate lips; I
knew how anger would turn his fair complexion to deadly white, and
bring the cruel light into his pale blue eyes. The love I bore to any
one seemed to be a reason for his hating them, and so I went on pitying
myself one long dreary afternoon during that absence of his of which I
have spoken, only sometimes remembering to check myself in my
murmurings by thinking of the new unseen link between us, and then
crying afresh to think how wicked I was. Oh, how well I remember that
long October evening! Amante came in from time to time, talking away to
cheer me--talking about dress and Paris, and I hardly know what, but
from time to time looking at me keenly with her friendly d