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 before dinner; and while he stopped to make some observations on a distant prospect of the Alps to the elder ladies, she and Olivia rambled on.

"Well, my dear (said the latter when they had got a sufficient distance not to be overheard), our ball the other evening was delightful; there was only one person that appeared dejected at it; and who that person was, and why dejected, I dare say you can guess."

"Impossible," (said Madeline, while a rosy blush at the same moment declared her consciousness of the object.)

"Poor de Sevignie (resumed Olivia), expected to have met you; and, in consequence of his disappointment, neither danced, talked, or did any thing like himself the whole evening."

It was this expectation then perhaps, thought Madeline, which prevented his coming the other morning. The idea was


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 too pleasing to be rejected; and every shadow of uneasiness vanished from her mind. Dinner was served at an earlier hour than usual; and soon after they had taken coffee, the Countess bade them adieu, the road between the town and the chateau being extremely lonesome.

She tenderly embraced Madeline at parting; and said, as she gave up one of her highest sources of pleasure in resigning her company, she could not wonder if she soon recalled her.

"Remember (cried Madame Chatteneuf), whenever you desire her return, you must come for her yourself; for, of our own accord, we cannot relinquish her society."

Pleased with the idea of soon beholding de Sevignie, and still more pleased at being able to account in any kind of satisfactory manner for his conduct, Madeline was unusually animated, and chatted with almost

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 as much vivacity as the little voluble Olivia, who, on reaching home, proposed a walk upon the ramparts of the town, the fashionable promenade of the place. Thither they all accordingly repaired, except Madame Chatteneuf, who felt somewhat fatigued. The sun was already set, and all was soft, serene and lovely: beneath the ramparts lay a delicious plain, scattered over with clumps of thick and spreading trees, a few neat cottages, and groups of cattle now reposing in sweet tranquillity. The river, that flowed in beautiful meanders through the plain, had already assumed the sable hue of evening, and thus heightened the brilliancy of the stars it reflected. The majestic Alps bounded the prospect, their feet hid in gloomy shadows, and their summits just beginning to be touched by the beams of a rising moon, which, as it ascended higher in the horizon, partly dissipated those shadows, and revealed in some degree, the romantic recesses they had concealed.


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 The company were just beginning to leave the ramparts; but the fineness of the night prevented Olivia and her companions from following their example, and they were soon the only party on them. As they proceeded, admiring the sublime and beautiful prospect they beheld, which touched their hearts with a kind of pensive pleasure, they nearly overtook a gentleman who walked before them, with downcast looks and folded arms, as if in deep and melancholy meditation: his air, his figure, had a strong resemblance to de Sevignie's; and Madeline was almost convinced it was him; but she feared saying so, lest she should betray the agitation the idea had excited. Olivia, however, free from all such emotion, instantly declared it was him; and, quickening her pace, found she was not mistaken. He started at the sound of her voice, and betrayed the greatest confusion while attempting, vainly attempting, to return her raillery: he caught a glimpse of Madeline, who had hitherto stood rather behind her


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 friend: again he started; and, leaving unfinished what he was saying to Olivia, he took the trembling hand of Madeline with one equally tremulous, exclaiming, "This is indeed an unexpected pleasure." The soft beam which stole from her eye at that moment, convinced M. Chalons, who watched her with the most critical attention, that the fate of her heart was already decided; and he rejoiced at having made the discovery ere his own affections were more entangled, resolving from that period to pay her no other attentions than what common politeness demanded, that the world might have no reason to rank him in the list of unfortunate lovers.

De Sevignie appeared no longer dejected; his eyes sparkled with their wonted fire; and he was able to answer the raillery of Mademoiselle Chatteneuf with his accustomed spirit. He accepted her invitation to supper; and never had minutes been so delightful to Madeline as those she passed at


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 it. In his looks, as well as words, there was a tenderness, whenever he addressed her, which convinced her of his sincerity. "The tongue (said she to herself), might be taught the language of deceit, but the eyes could never be instructed in it; they have ever been famed for telling truth."

The next morning after breakfast, she and Olivia walked out for the purpose of seeing some of the town, and purchasing some things which she wanted to wear at a large party to which she was to be taken in the evening, and which the Countess had amply given her the means of procuring. They had not proceeded far ere they met de Sevignie.

"Well you are a good creature (said Olivia), for I presume you are coming to pay your devoirs at our house, as I meet you in the high road to it." He made no reply; and she continued, "you shall not however be disappointed of the pleasure of our com-


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 extraordinary success; it was said he had an income of fifty thousand dollars from America alone. Sometimes he was handsome: sometimes as he looked sideways, downwards, and the light fell on him, he had the silent, enduring beauty of a carved ivory Negro mask, with his rather full eyes, and the strong queerly-arched brows, the immobile, compressed mouth; that momentary but revealed immobility, an immobility, a timelessness which the Buddha aims at, and which Negroes express sometimes without ever aiming at it; something old, old, and acquiescent in the race! Aeons of acquiescence in race destiny, instead of our individual resistance. And then a swimming through, like rats in a dark river. Connie felt a sudden, strange leap of sympathy for him, a leap mingled with compassion, and tinged with repulsion, amounting almost to love. The outsider! The outsider! And they called him a bounder! How much more bounderish and assertive Clifford looked! How much stupider!

Michaelis knew at once he had made an impression on her. He turned his full, hazel, slightly prominent eyes on her in a look of pure detachment. He was estimating her, and the extent of the impression he had made. With the English nothing could save him from being the eternal outsider, not even love. Yet women sometimes fell for him Englishwomen too.

He knew just where he was with Clifford. They were two alien dogs which would have liked to snarl at one another, but which smiled instead, perforce. But with the woman he was not quite so sure.

Breakfast was served in the bedrooms; Clifford never appeared before lunch, and the dining-room was a little dreary. After coffee Michaelis, restless and ill-sitting soul, wondered what he should do. It was a fine November day fine for Wragby. He looked over the melancholy park. My God! What a place!

He sent a servant to ask, could he be of any service to Lady Chatterley: he thought of driving into Sheffield. The answer came, would he care to go up to Lady Chatterley's sitting-room.

Connie had a sitting-room on the third floor, the top floor of the central portion of the house. Clifford's rooms were on the ground floor, of course. Michaelis was flattered by being asked up to Lady Chatterley's own parlour. He followed blindly after the


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 pany; we are going to take a ramble, and will permit you to be our escort."

"Your permission honours me (said he); but I am unfortunately prevented by very particular business from availing myself of it."

"Go, go; you are a shocking creature I declare (cried Olivia); this business is the same with that which prevented your waiting on Mademoiselle Clermont the other morning according to your promise." His letter had been shown, and the reason of it explained to Olivia and her mother.

De Sevignie coloured highly, and looked confused. "You speak sometimes from supposition I fancy," said he to Olivia.

"Not now I can assure (replied she); I know very well that what you have just said to me, is a mere pretext as well as what you wrote to Mam'selle Clermont the other morning."

"Well, allowing that you are right (cried he), what can you infer from my trying to


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 avoid her company and yours? but that I am sensible of the danger I run in being with either; and that, unlike your military heroes, I rather fly from it than brave it."

"You should always have that apprehension of danger about you then (said Olivia), and not ask a lady's permission to wait upon her, and then send a frivolous excuse."

"We are not always collected (cried he), and the reflection of the morning often destroys the resolution of the night." He then bowed and walked away.

The solemn accent in which he had delivered the last words shocked Madeline as much as the alteration in his looks and manner had already done; he was pale and languid; and his eyes, instead of anxiously seeking, assiduously avoided her; while a cool salutation was the only notice he took of her.

"De Sevignie is really one of the most altered beings within those few days I ever knew (said Olivia, as they pursued their


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 way); his conduct is really quite incomprehensible: was he an unfortunate lover, one might be able to account for it; but of that (continued she, looking archly at Madeline), there is little danger."

The pale cheeks of Madeline were instantly crimsoned over; and the distress and confusion she betrayed, precluded all farther raillery from Olivia.

In pity to her companion, who she saw scarcely able to stand, she hastened their return home; and, hoping solitude would enable her to recruit her spirits, under the pretext of dressing, proposed retiring to their respective chambers; a proposal which, as she imagined, was eagerly embraced.

The moment Madeline was alone, the tears, which pride had suppressed in the presence of Olivia, burst forth: but while she wept the alteration in the conduct of de Sevignie, her heart secretly applauded it


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 as a convincing proof of his honour and sensibility. "Either his reason or his situation does not sanction his attachment to me (said she), and he thus delicately, thus feelingly tries to suppress mine by remitting his attentions.

"Never does he now address me with tenderness, but when we accidentally meet, as if thrown off his guard at those moments by surprise: for whenever a meeting might be expected, he shuns it with anxiety; and if it does take place, treats me with the coldest indifference. Oh, let me (she continued), aid his efforts; let me endeavour to expel from my heart an attachment which, it is evident, can only end in unhappiness. Nor is it my own peace alone I shall consider by doing so; no, the peace of my father, dearer to me than life, is also concerned. I promised to my benevolent friend to resist the indulgence of feelings which had a tendency to embitter my tranquillity, and I will not wilfully violate that promise;—no, ye dear and revered preceptors of my youth! ye who, like benignant spirits,


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 servant he never noticed things, or had contact with his surroundings. In her room he did glance vaguely round at the fine German reproductions of Renoir and Cézanne.

"It's very pleasant up here," he said, with his queer smile, as if it hurt him to smile, showing his teeth. "You are wise to get to the top."

"Yes, I think so," she said.

Her room was the only gay, modern one in the house, the only spot in Wragby where her personality was at all revealed. Clifford had never seen it, and she asked very few people up.

Now she and Michaelis sat on opposite sides of the fire and talked. She asked him about himself, his mother and father, his brothers other people were always something of a wonder to her, and when her sympathy was awakened she was quite devoid of class feeling. Michaelis talked frankly about himself, quite frankly, without affectation, simply revealing his bitter, indifferent, stray-dog's soul, then showing a gleam of revengeful pride in his success.

"But why are you such a lonely bird?" Connie asked him; and again he looked at her, with his full, searching, hazel look.

"Some birds are that way," he replied. Then, with a touch of familiar irony; "but, look here, what about yourself? Aren't you by way of being a lonely bird yourself?" Connie, a little startled, thought about it for a few moments, and then she said: "Only in a way! Not altogether, like you!"

"Am I altogether a lonely bird?" he asked, with his queer grin of a smile, as if he had toothache; it was so wry, and his eyes were so perfectly unchangingly melancholy, or stoical, or disillusioned, or afraid.

"Why?" she said, a little breathless, as she looked at him. "You are, aren't you?"

She felt a terrible appeal coming to her from him, that made her almost lose her balance.

"Oh, you're quite right!" he said, turning his head away, and looking sideways, downwards, with that strange immobility of an old race that is hardly here in our present day. It was that that really made Connie lose her power to see him detached from herself.

He looked up at her with the full glance that saw everything, registered everything. At the same time, the infant crying in the


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 have watched over your Madeline, she will not make so ill a return to your care as to yield herself unresistingly a victim to sorrow—if she cannot attain, she will at least try to be deserving of the felicity you wish her!" She sighed heavily as she spoke; certain that that felicity never now could be hers; and that her efforts to conquer her attachment would be vain; when, at the very moment she wished to make them, the object of it was raised higher than ever in her estimation.

She thought not of dressing till Mademoiselle Chatteneuf tapped at her door to know if she was ready: she opened it with much confusion; and, apologizing for her tardiness, hurried on her clothes, and was soon able to attend her to dinner.

The entertainment to which they went in the evening, was pretty much in the stile of that given by Madame Chatteneuf: all the


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 officers and most of the fashionable people in town were assembled; but de Sevignie was not to be seen; his absence did not surprise, but it pained Madeline; she was sure ere she went, that he would not be present, from a fear of meeting her; and she sighed to think a sad necessity existed for his wishing to avoid her. She would not have danced, but from a fear of appearing particular if she refused. Her partner was a stranger; for though M. Chalons was present, he did not, in conformity to his resolution, attempt to engage her; he sought, indeed, to avoid as much as possible the fascination of her looks, which had already made too deep, and, he feared, too lasting an impression on his heart.

The next morning she went with her friends in their coach to pay visits, and take a survey of the town; and the charms of their conversation, joined to the novelty


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 of every thing she saw, insensibly beguiled her sadness. A select party assembled at dinner; de Sevignie was invited, but sent an excuse; the first, Olivia said, they had ever received from him, though they had frequently asked him, as he was not only a favourite of hers, but of her mother.


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CHAP. IX.

sadness which marked the brow of Madeline could not escape the notice of Madame Chatteneuf and her daughter; but they were both too delicate to mention it, yet left no effort untried to dissipate it. She had expressed a wish of visiting the Alps: and, in hopes of amusing her, Madame Chatteneuf made her and her daughter take an excursion thither the evening following the


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 night was crying out of his breast to her in a way that affected her very womb.

"It's awfully nice of you to think of me," he said laconically.

"Why shouldn't I think of you?" she exclaimed with hardly breath to utter it.

He gave the wry, quick hiss of a laugh.

"Oh, in that way! May I hold your hand for a minute?" he asked suddenly, fixing his eyes on her with almost hypnotic power, and sending out an appeal that affected her direct in the womb.

She stared at him, dazed and transfixed, and he went over and kneeled beside her, and took her two feet close in his two hands, and buried his face in her lap, remaining motionless. She was perfectly dim and dazed, looking down in a sort of amazement at the rather tender nape of his neck, feeling his face pressing her thighs. In all her burning dismay, she could not help putting her hand, with tenderness and compassion, on the defenceless nape of his neck, and he trembled with a deep shudder.

Then he looked up at her with that awful appeal in his full, glowing eyes. She was utterly incapable of resisting it. From her breast flowed the answering, immense yearning over him; she must give him anything, anything.

He was a curious and very gentle lover, very gentle with the woman, trembling uncontrollably, and yet at the same time detached, aware, aware of every sound outside.

To her it meant nothing except that she gave herself to him. And at length he ceased to quiver any more, and lay quite still, quite still, Then, with dim, compassionate fingers, she stroked his head, that lay on her breast.

When he rose, he kissed both her hands, then both her feet, in their suède slippers and in silence went away to the end of the room, where he stood with his back to her. There was silence for some minutes. Then he turned and came to her again as she sat in her old place by the fire.

"And now, I suppose you'll hate me!" he said in a quiet, inevitable way. She looked up at him quickly.

"Why should I?" she asked.

"They mostly do," he said; then he caught himself up. "I mean a Woman is supposed to."


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 day which has already been described, to the cottage of Olivia's nurse.

They set out in a chaise drawn by mules, leaving Madame Chatteneuf engaged at cards with a select party in the banqueting house; and, after travelling about a league, reached the cottage: its situation was romantically beautiful; it stood a little above the foot of a lofty mountain, which was surmounted by others equally tremendous, and overlooked a deep hollow, scattered over with a profusion of wild flowers, darkened by majestic pines, and washed by a clear rivulet, which proceeded from a mountain torrent at some distance: on a little grassy seat before the cottage, the nurse sat working, one of her daughters was milking the goats that browsed around it, and another was seen rambling about the neighbouring heights, gathering the herbs which grew upon them.


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 The romantic situation of the cottage, the simple appearance of its inhabitants, and their yet more simple occupations, altogether formed a pastoral scene inexpressibly pleasing to Madeline; to whose mind it recalled the scenes she had been so long accustomed to; and she gazed on it with emotions of tenderness, such as she might have felt on seeing features in a stranger which, by some striking resemblance, suddenly brought to view those of a beloved friend.

The nurse threw aside her work, and her daughters forsook their employments, the moment Olivia descended from the chaise, round whom they gathered with the most rapturous delight. She returned their caresses with affection: and enquired most kindly after the nurse's husband and son.

"A few days ago (replied the good woman), they went higher up the Alps, as usual, to keep flocks for the rich herdsmen during the summer months. Winter (she conti-


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 "This is the last moment when I ought to hate you," she said resentfully.

"I know! I know! It should be so! You're frightfully good to me" he cried miserably.

She wondered why he should be miserable. "Won't you sit down again?" she said. He glanced at the door.

"Sir Clifford!" he said. "Won't he won't he be?" She paused a moment to consider. "Perhaps!" she said. And she looked up at him. "I don't want Clifford to know not even to suspect. It would hurt him so much. But I don't think it's wrong, do you?"

"Wrong! Good God, no! You're only too infinitely good to me I can hardly bear it."

He turned aside, and she saw that in another moment he would be sobbing.

"But we needn't let Clifford know, need we?" she pleaded. "It would hurt him so. And if he never knows, never suspects, it hurts nobody."

"Me!" he said, almost fiercely; "he'll know nothing from me! You see if he does. Me give myself away! Ha! Ha!" He laughed hollowly, cynically at such an idea. She watched him in wonder. He said to her: "May I kiss your hand and go? I'll run into Sheffield I think, and lunch there if I may, and be back to tea. May I do anything for you? May I be sure you don't hate me?—and that you won't?"—he ended with a desperate note of cynicism.

"No, I don't hate you," she said. "I think you're nice."

"Ah!" he said to her fiercely, "I'd rather you said that to me than said you love me! It means such a lot more Till afternoon then. I've plenty to think about till then." He kissed her hands humbly and was gone.

"I don't think I can stand that young man," said Clifford at lunch.

"Why?" asked Connie.

"He's such a bounder underneath his veneer just waiting to bounce us."

"I think people have been so unkind to him," said Connie.

`Do you wonder? And do you think he employs his shining hours doing deeds of kindness?"

"I think he has a certain sort of generosity."


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 nued), winter, my dear young lady, is my season of happiness, for then I have all my family assembled about me, and we enjoy together the earnings of industry."

Olivia now led Madeline into the house, the interior neatness of which perfectly corresponded with that of its exterior; and from thence into the garden, a wild and romantic spot, which, with a small vineyard, stretched midway up a steep ascent, broken into a variety of grotesque hollows.

Oh how noble, how sublime did the prospect appear which Madeline now viewed! she felt struck with astonishment and veneration as she cast her eyes towards the summits of the congregated mountains piled before her; and her heart was more exalted


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 than ever towards the author of such glorious, such stupendous works,

The Parent of Good, Almighty

Her fancy pictured the exquisite pleasure which would be derived from exploring their sequestered solitudes; or, on the wings of the morning, penetrating to their innermost recesses. With mingled curiosity and enthusiasm, her mind soothed and delighted, she wandered about, till followed by the nurse, entreating her to sit down and partake with Mam'selle Olivia of the fruit and cream she had brought out for them.

She complied with the entreaties of the good woman, and seated herself by her friend in one of the little hollows already mentioned, which was impregnated with the most delicious fragrance from the herbs that grew about it.

The dun shades of twilight were now beginning to steal o'er the prospect, and


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Advertizing in the back
In accordance with WS:ADV, I think the list of other books at the end (pages 409–416 of the djvu) need not be transcribed, since, as far as I can tell, they won't be transcluded. Am I correct? Nemoanon (talk) 18:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


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 touched it with a sombre colouring, which rendered its beauty more interesting, and its solemnity more awful; the gloom, however, was still a little cheered by a yellow track of radiance which the sun, as it revealed its sinking orb between two parted cliffs above, cast along the projection of the hills; but by degrees this radiance faded away, and then the damp and dreary shadows, that had been gathering below, began to ascend; and, as if warned of their approach, the distant tinkling of sheep bells was immediately heard from the heights, intermingled with the rustic melody of shepherds' pipes. Delighted with those pastoral sounds, the enthusiasm of Madeline's soul revived; and with the eye of fancy she beheld the grand, the wonderful, the luxuriant spots from whence they descended. She saw the simple herdsman penning his flock for the night; while his dog, the faithful partner of his toil, as if endued with more than common instinct, watched beside, that none should straggle from the fold. She heard


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 He looked at her weirdly, without an answer. It was obvious he couldn't even accept the fact of the existence of Mellors, in any connection with his own life. It was sheer, unspeakable, impotent hate.

"And do you mean to say you'd marry him?—and bear his foul name?" he asked at length.

"Yes, that's what I want."

He was again as if dumbfounded.

"Yes!" he said at last. "That proves that what I've always thought about you is correct: you're not normal, you're not in your right senses. You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity, the nostalgie de la boue."

Suddenly he had become almost wistfully moral, seeing himself the incarnation of good, and people like Mellors and Connie the incarnation of mud, of evil. He seemed to be growing vague, inside a nimbus.

"So don't you think you'd better divorce me and have done with it?" she said.

"No! You can go where you like, but I shan't divorce you," he said idiotically.

"Why not?"

He was silent, in the silence of imbecile obstinacy.

"Would you even let the child be legally yours, and your heir?" she said.

"I care nothing about the child."

"But if it's a boy it will be legally your son, and it will inherit your title, and have Wragby."

"I care nothing about that," he said.

"But you must! I shall prevent the child from being legally yours, if I can. I'd so much rather it were illegitimate, and mine: if it can't be Mellors'."

"Do as you like about that."

He was immovable.

"And won't you divorce me?" she said. "You can use Duncan as a pretext! There'd be no need to bring in the real name. Duncan doesn't mind."

"I shall never divorce you," he said, as if a nail had been driven in.

"But why? Because I want you to?"


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 with the ear of fancy the neighbouring shepherds enquiring how each had fared throughout the day; and beheld some hastening to their romantically situated cottages; while others laid them down beneath the shelter of embowering pines; the last beams of the sun glimmering o'er all, as if loath to quit such scenes of innocence and beauty. It was now indeed a time particularly adapted for such fancies as she indulged; a time when all

A tender melancholy began to steal over the mind of Madeline; nor was Olivia's entirely free from it: 'twas a melancholy in union with the scene, and which taste and sensibility are so apt to feel and to indulge;


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 as the landscape, that charmed by day, gradually fades upon the sight, and, to the moralizing mind, presents an emblem of the transitory pleasures of life. Silence had returned many minutes ere Olivia or Madeline thought of stirring; they were at length rising for the purpose of departing, when they were again riveted to their seat by the soft breathings of an oboe, which seemed to come from some cliff above them at no great distance. The air was simple, tender, and pathetic; and played in a stile which evinced exquisite taste and feeling in the performer.

"How soft, how sweet, how melodious (cried Mademoiselle Chatteneuf, during the pause of a minute, for till then she and Madeline had been wrapped in attention too profound to permit them either to speak or move), what pathos, what masterly execution: but hark! the echoes revive the strains which we imagined had utterly died away; they seem celestial strains, and almost


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 "To spare my feelings?"

"Yes! Because who I really love, and it'll make you hate me, is Mr. Mellors, who was our gamekeeper here."

If he could have sprung out of his chair, he would have done so. His face went yellow, and his eyes bulged with disaster as he glared at her.

Then he dropped back in the chair, gasping and looking up at the ceiling.

At length he sat up.

"Do you mean to say you're telling me the truth?" he asked, looking gruesome.

"Yes! You know I am."

"And when did you begin with him?"

"In the spring."

He was silent like some beast in a trap.

"And it was you, then, in the bedroom at the cottage?"

So he had really inwardly known all the time.

"Yes!"

He still leaned forward in his chair, gazing at her like a cornered beast.

"My God, you ought to be wiped off the face of the earth!"

"Why?" she ejaculated faintly.

But he seemed not to hear her.

"That scum! That bumptious lout! That miserable cad! And carrying on with him all the time, while you were here and he was one of my servants! My God, my God, is there any end to the beastly lowness of women!"

He was beside himself with rage, as she knew he would be.

"And you mean to say you want to have a child to a cad like that?"

"Yes! I'm going to."

"You're going to! You mean you're sure! How long have you been sure?"

"Since June."

He was speechless, and the queer blank look of a child came over him again.

"You'd wonder," he said at last, "that such beings were ever allowed to be born."

"What beings?" she asked.


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 tempt one to believe the tales of the poets, and ascribe them to the genii of these mountains."

"Lord a mercy, my dear young lady (said the nurse, who only caught the last sentence), what a conceit! from a genius indeed; no, they come from a poor young gentleman, who frequently rambles about the heights, playing such mournful ditties as often and often makes me and my girls weep; and we think, to be sure, he has been crossed in love, and that nothing else could make him so melancholy, and so fond of being alone, and sitting for hours together in the deepest solitude by himself; and a pity it is he should have met with any thing to trouble him, he is so gentle and so handsome, and looks so good."

"Do you know his name?" asked Olivia, whose curiosity was strongly excited.

"No, Mam'selle; but I know he comes from V, for I asked him one day if he did not, and he said yes."


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 "And pray how came you to have any conversation with him?" enquired Olivia.

"Why one day, Mam'selle, about a fortnight after I had first noticed him, as he was passing the cottage, he appeared very much fatigued; so I asked him, for I was sitting before the door at work, if he would be pleased to walk in and take some whey; he thanked me courteously, and accepted my invitation, and sat a good bit with me chatting, for all the world with as much affability as if he did not think himself a bit better than me; so, from that time, he seldom comes this way without giving me a call, and frequently takes whey and fruit in the cottage; for which, indeed, in spite of all I can say, he will always pay more than they are worth."

"Is it possible to get a glimpse of him?" asked Olivia.

"Dear heart yes, if you stay a little longer; this is about the time he generally returns to town, and he almost always descends by the path near this recess."


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 "I will stay a few minutes longer to try if I can see him," said Olivia.

"Pray do not (exclaimed Madeline, laying her hand, which trembled violently, upon Olivia's arm); the darkness increases fast, and if we stay much longer, we shall be quite benighted."

"No, no, there's no danger of that (replied Olivia); but if you wish it I will return immediately: dismiss however, I beseech you, the terrors you have conjured up to alarm you; for if you tremble in this manner, you will scarcely be able to reach the chaise."

It was not any apprehension of danger however which agitated the soul of Madeline, it was the agony of thinking that de Sevignie was the sad and solitary mourner to whose sweet and melancholy strains she had been listening; for in the air she heard she perfectly recollected one she had taught him during his visit at her father's house; and she wished to avoid his presence, least she


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 should betray the emotions a knowledge of his dejection had inspired. Again she pressed Olivia to depart; who, in compliance with her wishes, was moving from the spot, when the nurse hastily exclaimed, "Stop, Mam'selle, stop, he's coming now, for there's his dog. Ah, 'tis a good-natured soul (cried she, patting the head of a large spaniel which suddenly sprung into the garden, and fawned about her); he is a faithful companion to his poor master, and attends him in all his rambles: there he sits for hours at a time, upon a point of rock beside him, looking up in his face while he plays upon the oboe, like any christian, as if he knew his sorrows, and pitied them."

"I think I know that dog," said Olivia.

"Aye, like enough (cried the nurse); and see there comes his master."

Olivia raised her eyes; but the light was too imperfect to let her discern the features of the person descending: but in a few minutes, as he drew nearer, she started, and


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 exclaimed—"Gracious heaven, de Sevignie!" Madeline withdrew her hand involuntarily from Olivia, and reseated herself.

"I thought, indeed (said Olivia), it could be no other than de Sevignie, when I heard of an eccentric being always wandering about those solitudes. Pray (continued she, while overpowered by confusion and surprise, he stood transfixed to the spot where he had first beheld her), have you yet chosen a cell for your retirement? for I suppose you will soon renounce the world and its vanities for ever. But seriously, de Sevignie, 'tis rather unfortunate that you and I should lately have only met at periods when (at least) one of us wished to avoid the other."

His confusion, if possible increased; he knew she alluded to his conduct the last time they had met. "If I ever harboured such a wish (said he), it was because, as I have


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 convince me of the importance of the change. I merely don't believe in your love of Duncan Forbes."

"But why should you believe in it? You have only to divorce me, not to believe in my feelings."

"And why should I divorce you?"

"Because I don't want to live here any more. And you really don't want me."

"Pardon me! I don't change. For my part, since you are my wife, I should prefer that you should stay under my roof in dignity and quiet. Leaving aside personal feelings, and I assure you, on my part it is leaving aside a great deal, it is bitter as death to me to have this order of life broken up, here in Wragby, and the decent round of daily life smashed, just for some whim of yours."

After a time of silence she said:

"I can't help it. I've got to go. I expect I shall have a child." He too was silent for a time.

"And is it for the child's sake you must go?" he asked at length.

She nodded.

"And why? Is Duncan Forbes so keen on his spawn?"

"Surely keener than you would be," she said.

"But really? I want my wife, and I see no reason for letting her go. If she likes to bear a child under my roof, she is welcome, and the child is welcome: provided that the decency and order of life is preserved. Do you mean to tell me that Duncan Forbes has a greater hold over you? I don't believe it."

There was a pause.

"But don't you see," said Connie. "I must go away from you, and I must live with the man I love."

"No, I don't see it! I don't give tuppence for your love, nor for the man you love. I don't believe in that sort of cant."

"But you see, I do."

"Do you? My dear Madam, you are too intelligent, I assure you, to believe in your own love for Duncan Forbes. Believe me, even now you really care more for me. So why should I give in to such nonsense!"

She felt he was right there. And she felt she could keep silent no longer.

"Because it isn't Duncan that I do love," she said, looking up at him. "We only said it was Duncan, to spare your feelings."


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 already told you, I apprehended danger in your company."

As he spoke, his eyes glanced round as if in search of another object, and at last rested on the recess where Madeline sat, whose white robe rendered her conspicuous.

"Mam'selle Clermont (said he) is it not——" advancing to her. She rose at his approach; and, withholding the hand he attempted to take, passed him to Olivia, and again entreated her to return home.

Her curiosity gratified, Olivia no longer hesitated to comply with this entreaty; and they directly left the garden, without taking any farther notice of de Sevignie. Olivia was too much offended, and Madeline too fearful of betraying her feelings, to bid him farewell. That fear, however, was soon lost in the superior one she felt at the idea of his going the solitary road that lay between the cottage and the town by himself; and she


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 stood hesitatingly at the door of the chaise; wishing to declare her apprehensions, yet dreading to do so, least she should betray her feelings.

De Sevignie, in the mean time, heart-struck by the manner in which she had declined his notice, remained some minutes fixed on the spot where she had left him. "Oh, Madeline! (he sighed), is it thus you heighten the pangs, the anguish you have caused me. Yet, alas (he continued), why do I accuse her? unwillingly she caused that anguish; and how, without knowing, can she pity it: but am I assured her pity would follow that knowledge?—no; her averted looks give me no reason to suppose it would." Slowly he quitted the garden, and, passing through the cottage, to his infinite surprise, found she was not yet departed. Hurt, however, by her coldness, he merely bowed to her and Olivia; and was hastening away, when the latter, who saw through the motives of Madeline's delay, and determined to


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 gratify her, though somewhat offended with de Sevignie, exclaimed, "so you are decamping, without having the gallantry to offer your protection."

"The assurance, you should say (cried de Sevignie, returning), conscious as I am that I have (though heaven knows how unintentionally), offended you."

"Well, I'll forgive you this once; so you may hand us into the chaise, and take a seat yourself."

"But will your friend, Mam'selle Clermont, be equally generous," asked he.

"Oh, I dare say she will follow a good example; what say you, my dear?" cried Olivia, turning to her.

"I cannot pardon, because I have not been offended," said Madeline in much confusion, too clearly perceiving that Olivia suspected the state of her heart.

"Nor never may you be by me (cried de Sevignie, with fervour, and taking her hand), for then I should be wretched indeed. Oh, Madeline! (he continued in a low voice


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 though I dread your smiles, I could not bear your frowns."

He handed Olivia first into the chaise; and thus contrived to have Madeline next to himself; something he would have said to her after they were seated in a low voice; but she turned her head from him, and entered into conversation with Olivia. Her hand he took however in spite of her efforts to withstand it; nor resigned it till they stopped at Madame Chatteneuf's. After handing them into the house, he bade them adieu; but it was a most unwilling adieu; for he hesitated as he spoke, and lingered on the threshold instead of departing. He was at length turning from it, when Olivia suddenly invited him to supper; and it struck Madeline that she had only delayed doing so for the purpose of teasing him. He accepted the invitation; and they all repaired to the banqueting-house, where Madame Chatteneuf and her friends were still engaged at


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 "I can't stay long here," she whispered to Hilda, terrified.

And she suffered going into her own bedroom, re-entering into possession as if nothing had happened. She hated every minute inside the Wragby walls.

They did not meet Clifford till they went down to dinner. He was dressed, and with a black tie: rather reserved, and very much the superior gentleman. He behaved perfectly politely during the meal, and kept a polite sort of conversation going: but it seemed all touched with insanity.

"How much do the servants know?" asked Connie, when the woman was out of the room.

"Of your intentions? Nothing whatsoever."

"Mrs. Bolton knows."

He changed colour.

"Mrs. Bolton is not exactly one of the servants," he said.

"Oh, I don't mind."

There was tension till after coffee, when Hilda said she would go up to her room.

Clifford and Connie sat in silence when she had gone. Neither would begin to speak. Connie was so glad that he wasn't taking the pathetic line, she kept him up to as much haughtiness as possible. She just sat silent and looked down at her hands.

"I suppose you don't at all mind having gone back on your word?" he said at last.

"I can't help it," she murmured.

"But if you can't, who can?"

"I suppose nobody."

He looked at her with curious cold rage. He was used to her. She was as it were embedded in his will. How dared she now go back on him, and destroy the fabric of his daily existence? How dared she try to cause this derangement of his personality!

"And for what do you want to go back on everything?" he insisted.

"Love!" she said. It is best to be hackneyed.

"Love of Duncan Forbes? But you didn't think that worth having, when you met me. Do you mean to say you now love him better than anything else in life."

"One changes," she said.

"Possibly! Possibly you may have whims. But you still have to


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 believe anything nor understand anything until I see you personally, here under normal circumstances. I needn't tell you that nobody here suspects anything, so your return would be quite normal. Then if you feel, after we have talked things over, that you still remain in the same mind, no doubt we can come to terms."

Connie showed this letter to Mellors.

"He wants to begin his revenge on you," said he, handing the letter back.

Connie was silent. She was somewhat surprised to find that she was afraid of Clifford. She was afraid to go near him. She was afraid of him as if he were evil and dangerous.

"What shall I do?" she said.

"Nothing, if you don't want to do anything."

She replied, trying to put Clifford off. He answered: "If you don't come back to Wragby now, I shall consider that you are coming back one day, and act accordingly. I shall just go on the same and wait for you here, if I wait for fifty years."

She was frightened. This was bullying of an insidious sort. She had no doubt he meant what he said. He would not divorce her, and the child would be his, unless she could find some means of establishing its illegitimacy.

After a time of worry and harassment, she decided to go to Wragby. Hilda would go with her. She wrote this to Clifford. He replied: "I shall not welcome your sister, but I shall not deny her the door. I have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her."

They went to Wragby. Clifford was away when they arrived. Mrs. Bolton received them.

"Oh, your Ladyship, it isn't the happy homecoming we hoped for, is it!" she said.

"Isn't it!" said Connie.

So this woman knew! How much did the rest of the servants know or suspect?

She entered the house which now she hated with every fiber in her body. The great, rambling mass of a place seemed evil to her, just a menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was its victim.


text:
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 percent of the 2B type) is so close to that of the former unmixed dye that, when the two curves are drawn by the fountain pen of the Hardy-G. E. instrument, they overlap too much to be separated. Making computations on the ICI system of colorimetric specification, the 10 percent addition is found to cause a change of about 0.0014, 0.0004 and 0.0017 in the x, y and Y values, respectively. These values were obtained when all errors due to weighing and hygroscopicity of samples and to making up solutions were eliminated; some other errors were eliminated by reading directly on the instrument counter at selected wavelengths. If these differences are considered as errors due to a single impurity of known character, and the indicated precautions are taken, then the performance of the instrument, using solutions, becomes comparable to that of the eye, using dyed skeins. But these conditions are ones which cannot be used in routine standardization. In particular, the number and nature of the impurities are often unknown and variable; also, it is inconvenient to eliminate errors by measurements on the standard every time the corresponding lot comes up, or by reading on the counter. The time element, as well as serious difficulties of “levelness” and incompleteness of “exhaust,” makes measurements on skeins or pieces wholly impracticable; but measurements of this sort will be reported. It is our experience that the majority of cases fall between the two extremes discussed; but enough fall near the “similar-curve” extreme to make standardization “for shade” (chromaticity) frequently very unsatisfactory when compared to standardization by “dye testing.”

22. Noticeability of Color Difference in Daylight., Eastman Kodak Company.

The probable error of two component additive visual color matching has been adopted as the most reproducible criterion of the noticeability of color differences. The probable errors of matching a series of colors are proportional to the corresponding just noticeable differences, within the rather great uncertainties of the latter. An apparatus has been employed in which the color of each half of a two-degree circular field can be varied corresponding to the points along any of a very great number of straight lines in the chromaticity diagram. The luminance of each half of the test field remains constant for all of the additive mixtures of the light from any two of a set of over one hundred color filters, all of which have equal luminous transmittances for the quality of light incident upon them in the instrument. A surrounding field of forty degrees diameter can be uniformly illuminated to any desired luminance and chromaticity. Over 18,000 color matches have been made by one observer, with 15 millilamberts luminance in the test field and 7.5 millilamberts of daylight quality (ICI illuminant C) in the surrounding field. The probable errors of determination of position along specified straight lines in the chromaticity diagram can be shown as functions of the positions on those lines corresponding to the chromaticities of the colors matched. The probable errors of purity determinations for representative dominant wave-lengths and their complementaries (including purples) reveal a direct relation between the noticeabilities of purity differences for nearly neutral complementary chromaticities. The noticeabilities of chromaticity differences along straight lines close to the spectrum locus and the boundary of the purples are very simple functions of distance along those lines. A curve for the probable error of wave-length matching under conditions of automatically constant luminance of the spectrum has been deduced from the observed data and shows only two minima, at about 486 mμ and 582 mμ. The probable errors of matching white (illuminant C) with mixtures of complementary colors can be represented by points on an ellipse around the point representing white in the chromaticity diagram. Similar ellipses represent the observed probable errors of all kinds of two-color mixtures matching eighteen other chromaticities well distributed over the chromaticity diagram. The major characteristics of all of the curves and loci representing the results for the principal observer have been confirmed by less extensive series of color matches by other observers.

23. ., Lamp Development Laboratory, General Electric Company, Nela Park.

The Maxwell triangle usual in colorimetry is predicated on a symmetrical relationship among the three components of the Young-Helmholtz theory. There is no reason to treat them symmetrically; the Munsell color system is one of cylindrical coordinates about the axis of value, the 1931 ICI system attaches all the luminosity to the Y component, and observations of chromaticity differences are made after equating brightness. By plotting X and Z values for colors of the same luminous reflectance (albedo, Munsell value) it is found that a suitably chosen ratio of scales (threefold greater for X) gives a nearly uniform radial and circumferential spacing of the Munsell colors, centered about the neutral color of equal value. For measurements made under ICI standard illuminant C (as were those of Glenn and Killian) normalization by division by (respectively) X and Z for standard illuminant C gives X$e$. and Z$e1$, and a scale-factor of approximately. Plotting Z$e$-Y against X$e$-Y brings the neutral color for each value of luminous reflectance to the origin of coordinates. Approximate register of colors of equal hue and chroma, and unequal value, is obtained by converting X$e1$, Y$1$, and Z$e$ to V$x$, V$x1$ V$y1$ using the Munsell-Sloan-Godlove value function, and plotting V$z$-V$y$ against V$x$-V$y$. These subtractions are the mathematical representation of inhibitory nervous connections (synapses) in the retina, according to the author’s theory of color vision.

Bibliography: E. Q. Adams and P. W. Cobb, J. Exp. Psych. 5, 39 (1922). E. Q. Adams, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 6, 932 (1922); Psych. Rev. 30, 56 (1923). D. B. Judd, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 23, 359 (1933). ‘A. E. O.Munsell, L. L. Sloan and I. H. Godlove, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 23, 394, 419 (1933), D. Nickerson, ‘‘Use of I.C.I. tristimulus values in disk colorimetry,” U. S. Department of Agriculture (1938). W. D. Wright, Nature 146, 155 (1940).


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 was now and which he had been becoming for years, emerged into the world, it was much sharper and keener than the real man he used to be. This perverted child-man was now a real businessman; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel. When he was out among men, seeking his own ends, and "making good" his colliery workings, he had an almost uncanny shrewdness, hardness, and a straight sharp punch. It was as if his very passivity and prostitution to the Magna Mater gave him insight into material business affairs, and lent him a certain remarkable inhuman force. The wallowing in private emotion, the utter abasement of his manly self, seemed to lend him a second nature, cold, almost visionary, business-clever. In business he was quite inhuman.

And in this Mrs. Bolton triumphed. "How he's getting on!" she would say to herself in pride. "And that's my doing! My word, he'd never have got on like this with Lady Chatterley. She was not the one to put a man forward. She wanted too much for herself."

At the same time, in some corner of her weird female soul, how she despised him and hated him! He was to her the fallen beast, the squirming monster. And while she aided and abetted him all she could, away in the remotest corner of her ancient healthy womanhood she despised him with a savage contempt that knew no bounds. The merest tramp was better than he.

His behaviour with regard to Connie was curious. He insisted on seeing her again. He insisted, moreover, on her coming to Wragby. On this point he was finally and absolutely fixed. Connie had promised to come back to Wragby, faithfully.

"But is it any use?" said Mrs. Bolton. "Can't you let her go, and be rid of her?"

"No! She said she was coming back, and she's got to come."

Mrs. Bolton opposed him no more. She knew what she was dealing with.

"I needn't tell you what effect your letter has had on me," he wrote to Connie to London. "Perhaps you can imagine it if you try, though no doubt you won't trouble to use your imagination on my behalf.

"I can only say one thing in answer: I must see you personally, here at Wragby, before I can do anything. You promised faithfully to come back to Wragby, and I hold you to the promise. I don't


text: The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 1/The Manifesto of the Socialist League


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 shoulders, while he laid his face on her bosom and sobbed, shaking and hulking his huge shoulders, whilst she softly stroked his dusky-blond hair and said: "There! There! There! There then! There then! Never you mind! Never you mind, then!"

And he put his arms round her and clung to her like a child, wetting the bib of her starched white apron, and the bosom of her pale-blue cotton dress, with his tears. He had let himself go altogether, at last.

So at length she kissed him, and rocked him on her bosom, and in her heart she said to herself: "Oh, Sir Clifford! Oh, high and mighty Chatterleys! Is this what you've come down to!" And finally he even went to sleep, like a child. And she felt worn out, and went to her own room, where she laughed and cried at once, with a hysteria of her own. It was so ridiculous! It was so awful! such a come-down! so shameful! And it was so upsetting as well.

After this, Clifford became like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: "Yes! Do kiss me! Do kiss me!" And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same: "Do kiss me!" and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery.

And he lay with a queer, blank face like a child, with a bit of the wonderment of a child. And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of madonna-worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity of being a child when he was a man.

Mrs. Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed nor rebuked him. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken with an apparent candour and an apparent wonderment, that looked almost like a religious exaltation: the perverse and literal rendering of: "except ye become again as a little child." While she was the Magna Mater, full of power and potency, having the great blond child-man under her will and her stroke entirely.

The curious thing was that when this child-man, which Clifford


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 if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. "It comes," she thought to herself, hating him a little, "because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he's like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!"

But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated.

The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die.

So Mrs. Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. "I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn't!" she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

Clifford thought of the way he had been betrayed by the woman Connie, and in a contagion of grief, tears filled his eyes and began to run down his cheeks. He was weeping for himself. Mrs. Bolton, as soon as she saw the tears running over his blank face, hastily wiped her own wet cheeks on her little handkerchief, and leaned towards him.

"Now don't you fret, Sir Clifford!" she said, in a luxury of emotion, "Now don't you fret, don't, you'll only do yourself an injury!"

His body shivered suddenly in an indrawn breath of silent sobbing, and the tears ran quicker down his face. She laid her hand on his arm, and her own tears fell again. Again the shiver went through him, like a convulsion, and she laid her arm round his shoulder. "There, there! There, there! Don't you fret, then, don't you! Don't you fret!" she moaned to him, while her own tears fell. And she drew him to her, and held her arms round his great


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 No answer!

"Oh dear, oh dear! Then I'll telephone to Sheffield for Dr. Carrington, and Dr. Lecky may as well run round straight away."

She was moving to the door, when he said in a hollow tone:

"No!"

She stopped and gazed at him. His face was yellow, blank, and like the face of an idiot.

"Do you mean you'd rather I didn't fetch the doctor?"

"Yes! I don't want him," came the sepulchral voice.

"Oh, but Sir Clifford, you're ill, and I daren't take the responsibility. I must send for the doctor, or I shall be blamed."

A pause: then the hollow voice said:

"I'm not ill. My wife isn't coming back." It was as if an image spoke.

"Not coming back? you mean her ladyship?" Mrs. Bolton moved a little nearer to the bed. "Oh, don't you believe it. You can trust her ladyship to come back."

The image in the bed did not change, but it pushed a letter over the counterpane.

"Read it!" said the sepulchral voice.

"Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish."

But the face with the fixed blue eyes sticking out did not change.

"Read it!" repeated the voice.

"Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford," she said.

And she read the letter.

"Well, I am surprised at her ladyship," she said. "She promised so faithfully she'd come back!"

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease.

She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have known his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself, If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it; or


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", I am afraid what you foresaw has happened. I am really in love with another man, and I do hope you will divorce me. I am staying at present with Duncan in his flat. I told you he was at Venice with us. I'm awfully unhappy for your sake: but do try to take it quietly. You don't really need me any more, and I can't bear to come back to Wragby. I'm most awfully sorry. But do try to forgive me, and divorce me and find someone better. I'm not really the right person for you, I am too impatient and selfish, I suppose. But I can't ever come back to live with you again. And I feel so frightfully sorry about it all, for your sake. But if you don't let yourself get worked up, you'll see you won't mind so frightfully. You didn't really care about me personally. So do forgive me and get rid of me."

Clifford was not inwardly surprised to get this letter. Inwardly, he had known for a long time she was leaving him. But he had absolutely refused any outward admission of it. Therefore, outwardly, it came as the most terrible blow and shock to him. He had kept the surface of his confidence in her quite serene.

And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall.

Clifford was like a hysterical child. He gave Mrs. Bolton a terrible shock, sitting up in bed ghastly and blank.

"Why, Sir Clifford, whatever's the matter?"

No answer! She was terrified lest he had had a stroke. She hurried and felt his face, took his pulse.

"Is there a pain? Do try and tell me where it hurts you. Do tell me!"


text: Lady Chatterley's Lover/Chapter 19

title: Lady Chatterley's Lover/Chapter 19


text: Author:George Augustus Löhr

title: Author:George Augustus Löhr


text: Author:Andrew Mitchell Thomson

title: Author:Andrew Mitchell Thomson


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 knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to be no one’s business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. Of course this always happened in the country, because it was there that Camilla was most bored. No other eligible young man happened to be free at the moment: Camilla never engaged herself to ineligibles. The habit of years is not easily broken: Camilla became engaged to Maurice, and, for the


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 six months of the engagement, he lived in Paradise. A fool’s Paradise, if you like, but Paradise all the same.

About Easter time Camilla told him, very nicely and kindly, that she had mistaken her own heart—she hoped he would not let it make him very unhappy. She would always wish him the best of good fortune, and doubtless he would find it in the affection of some other girl much nicer and more worthy of him than his sincere friend Camilla. Camilla was right—no one could have been less worthy of him than she: but after all it was Camilla he thought that he loved, Camilla he felt that he wanted, not any other girl at all, no matter how nice or how worthy.

He took it very quietly: sent her a note so cold and unconcerned that Camilla was quite upset, and cried most of the evening, and got up next day with swollen eyelids and a very bad temper. She was not so sure of her power as she had been—and the loss of such a certainty is never pleasant.

He, meanwhile, advertised for a furnished house, and found one—by letter, which seemed to be the very thing he wanted. “Handsomely and conveniently furnished five miles from a railway station—a well-


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 built house standing in its own grounds of five acres—garden, orchard pasture, magnificent view.” Being as unversed in the ways of house agents as in those of women, he took it on trust, paid a quarter’s rent, and went down to take possession. He had instructed the local house agent to find a woman who would come in for a few hours daily to “do for him.”

“I’ll have no silly women living in the house,” said he.

It was on an inclement June evening that the station fly set him down in front of his new house. The drive had been long and dreary, and seemed to Maurice more like seventy miles than seven. Now he let down the carriage window and thrust his head into the rain to see his new house. It was a stucco villa, with iron railings in the worst possible taste. It had an air at once new and worn out; no one seemed ever to have lived in it, and yet everything about it was broken and shabby. The door stuck a little at first with the damp, and when at last it opened and Maurice went over his house, he found it furnished mainly with oil-cloth and three-legged tables, and photographs in Oxford frames—like a seaside lodging-house. The


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 house was clean, however, and the woman in attendance was clean, but the atmosphere of the place was that of a vault. He looked out through the streaming panes at the magnificent view so dwelt upon in the house agents’ letters. The house stood almost at the edge of a disused chalk quarry; far below stretched a flat plain, dotted here and there with limekilns and smoky, tall chimneys. The five acres looked very bare and thistly, and the rain was dripping heavily from a shivering, half-dead cypress on to a draggled, long-haired grass plot. Mr Brent shivered too, and ordered a fire.

When the woman had gone, he sat long by the fire in one of those cane and wood chairs that fold up—who wants a chair to fold up?—so common in lodging-houses. Unless you sit quite straight in these chairs you tumble out of them. He gazed at the fire, and thought, and dreamed. His dreams were, naturally, of Camilla; his thoughts were of his work.

“I’ve taken the house for three years,” said he. “Well, one place is as good as another to be wretched in. But one room I must furnish—for you can’t work on oil-cloth.”


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So next day he walked to Rochester and bought some old bureaux, and chairs, and book-cases, a few Persian rugs and some brass things, unpacked his books and settled down to the hermit’s life to which he had vowed himself. The woman came every morning from her cottage a mile away, and left at noon. He got his meals himself—always chops, or steaks, or eggs—and presently began to grow accustomed to the place. When the sun shone it was not so bad. He could make no way against the thorns and thistles on his five acres, and they quickly grew into a very wilderness. But a wilderness is pleasant to wander in; and a few flowers had survived long neglect, and here and there put out red, or white, or yellow buds. And he worked away at his book about Greek poetry.

He almost believed that he was contented; he had never cared for people so much as for books, and now he saw no people, and his books began to crowd his shelves. No one passed by “The Yews”—so called, he imagined, in extravagant compliment to the decaying cypress—for it stood by a grass-grown by-way that had once connected two main roads, each a couple of miles distant.


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 These were now joined by a better road down in the valley, and no one came past Maurice’s window save the milk, the bread, the butcher, and the postman.

Summer turned brown and dry and became autumn, autumn turned wet and chilly and grew into winter, and all the winds of heaven blew cold and damp through the cracks of the ill-built house.

Maurice was glad when the spring came; he had taken the house for three years, and he was a careful man, and also, in his way, a determined. Yet it was good to look out once more on something green, and to see sunshine and a warm sky; it was near Easter now. In all these ten months nothing whatever had happened to him. He had never been beyond his five acres—and no one had been to see him. He had no relations, and friends soon forget; besides, after all, friends, unlike relations, cannot go where they are not invited.

It was on the Saturday before Easter that the quarryside fell in. Maurice was working in his study when he heard a sudden crack and a slow, splitting sound, and then a long, loud, rumbling noise, like thunder, that echoed and re-echoed from the hills on each side.


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 And, looking from his window, he saw the cloud of white dust rise high above the edge of the old quarry, and seem to drift off to join the cotton-wool clouds in the blue sky.

“I suppose it’s all safe enough here,” he said, and went back to his manuscripts. But he could not work. At last something had happened; he found himself shaken and excited. He laid down the pen. “I wonder if any one was hurt?” he said; “the road runs just below, of course. I wonder whether there’ll be any more of it—I wonder?” A wire jerked, the cracked bell sounded harshly through the silence of the house. He sprang to his feet. “Who on earth” he said. “The house isn’t safe after all, perhaps, and they’ve come to tell me.”

As he went along the worn oil-cloth of the hall he saw through the comfortless white-spotted glass of his front door the outline of a woman’s hat.

He opened the door—it stuck as usual—but he got it open. There stood a girl holding a bicycle.

“Oh!” she said, without looking at him, “I’m so sorry to trouble you—my bicycle’s run down—and I’m afraid it’s a puncture, and could you let me have some water, to


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 find the hole—and if I might sit down a minute.”

Her voice grew lower and lower.

He opened the door wide and put out his hand for the bicycle. She took two steps past him, rather unsteadily, and sat down on the stairs—there were no chairs: the furniture of the hall was all oil-cloth and hat pegs.

He saw now that she was very pale; her face looked greenish behind her veil’s white meshes.

He propped the machine against the door, as she leaned her head back against the ugly marbled paper of the staircase wall.

“I’m afraid you’re ill,” he said gently. But the girl made no answer. Her head slipped along the varnished wall and rested on the stair two steps above where she sat. Her hat was crooked and twisted; even a student of Greek could see that she had fainted.

“Oh Lord!” said he.

He got her hat and veil off—he never knew how, and he wondered afterwards at his own cleverness, for there were many pins, long and short; he fetched the cushion from his armchair and put it under her head; he took off her gloves and rubbed her hands and her


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 forehead with vinegar, but her complexion remained green, and she lay, all in a heap, at the foot of his staircase.

Then he remembered that fainting people should be laid flat and not allowed to lie about in heaps at the foot of stairs, so he very gently and gingerly picked the girl up in his arms and carried her into his sitting-room. Here he laid her on the ground—he had no sofa—and sat beside her on the floor, patiently fanning her with a copy of the Athenæum, and watching the pinched, pallid face for some sign of returning life. It came at last, in a flutter of the eyelids, a long-drawn, gasping breath. The Greek scholar rushed for whisky—brandy he esteemed as a mere adjunct of channel boats—lifted her head and held the glass to her lips. The blood had come back to her face in a rush of carnation; she drank—choked—drank—he laid her head down and her eyes opened. They were large, clear grey eyes—very bewildered-looking just now—but they and the clear red tint in cheeks and lips transformed the face.

“Good gracious,” said he, “she’s pretty! Pretty? she’s beautiful!”

She was. That such beauty should so easily have hidden itself behind a green-tinted mask,


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 with sunken eyelid, seemed a miracle to the ingenuous bookworm.

“You’re better now,” said he with feverish banality. “Give me your hands—so—now can—yes, that’s right—here, this chair is the only comfortable one”

She sank into the chair, and waved away the more whisky which he eagerly proffered. He stood looking at her with respectful solicitude.

After a few moments she stretched her arms like a sleepy child, yawned, and then suddenly broke into laughter. It had a strange sound. No one had laughed in that house since the wet night when Mr Brent took possession of it, and he had never been able to bring himself to believe that any one had ever laughed there before.

Then he remembered having heard that women have hysterical fits as well as fainting fits, and he said eagerly: “Oh don’t! It’s all right—you were faint—the heat or something”

“Did I faint?” she asked with interest. “I never fainted before. But—oh—yes—I remember. It was rather horrible. The quarry tumbled down almost on me, and I just stopped short—in time—and I came


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 round by this road because the other’s stopped up, and I was so glad when I saw the house. Thank you so much; it must have been an awful bother. I think I had better start soon”

“No, you don’t; you’re not fit to ride alone yet,” said he to himself. Aloud he said: “You said something about a puncture—when you are better I’ll mend it. And, look here—have you had any lunch?”

“No,” said she.

“Then—if you’ll allow me.” He left the room, and presently returned with the tray set for his own lunch; then he fetched from the larder everything he could lay hands on: half a cold chicken, some cold meat pudding, a pot of jam, bottled beer. He set these confusedly on the table. “Now,” he said, “come and try to eat.”

“It’s very good of you to bother,” she said, a little surprise in her tone, for she had expected “lunch” to be a set formal meal at which some discreet female relative would preside. “But aren’t you—don’t you—do you live alone, then?”

“Yes, a woman comes in in the mornings. I’m sorry she’s gone: she could have arranged a better lunch for you.”


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“Better? why, it’s lovely!” said she, accepting the situation with frank amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in its place.

Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one serves a queen—but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite her. During lunch they talked.

After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while; then it was past three o’clock.

“You won’t go yet,” he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him a great stake. “Let me make you some tea—I can, I assure you—and let us see if the tyre holds up”

“Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness”

“Well, then,” said he desperately, “take pity on a poor hermit! I give you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my bedmaker.”

“But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?”

“I thought I didn’t, then.”


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“Well—now you know better, why don’t you come back and talk to people in the ordinary way?”

This was the first and last sign she gave that the circumstances in which she found herself with him were anything but ordinary.

“I have a book to finish,” said he. “Would you like to have tea in the wilderness or in here?” He wisely took her consent for granted this time, and his wisdom was justified.

They had tea in the garden. The wilderness blossomed like a rose, to Maurice’s thinking. In his mind he was saying over and over again: “How bored I must have been all this time! How bored I must have been!”

It seemed to him that his mind was opening, like a flower, and for the first time. He had never talked so well, and he knew it—all the seeds of thought, sown in those long, lonely hours, bore fruit now. She listened, she replied, she argued and debated.

“Beautiful—and sensible,” said Maurice to himself. “What a wonderful woman!” There was, besides, an alertness of mind, a quick brightness of manner that charmed him. Camilla had been languid and dreamy.

Suddenly she rose to her feet.


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“I must go,” she said, “but I have enjoyed myself so much. You are an ideal host: thank you a thousand times. Perhaps we shall meet again some day, if you return to the world. Do you know, we’ve been talking and wrangling for hours and hours and never even thought of wondering what each other’s names are—I think we’ve paid each other a very magnificent compliment, don’t you?”

He smiled and said: “My name is Maurice Brent.”

“Mine is Diana Redmayne. If it sounds like somebody in the Family Herald, I can’t help it.” He had wheeled the bicycle into the road, and she had put on hat and gloves and stood ready to mount before she said: “If you come back to the world I shall almost certainly meet you. We seem to know the same people; I’ve heard your name many times.”

“From whom?” said he.

“Among others,” said she, with her foot on the pedal, “from my cousin Camilla. Good-bye.”

And he was left to stare down the road after the swift flying figure.

Then he went back into the lonely little


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 house, and about half-past twelve that night he realised that he had done no work that day, and that those hours which had not been spent talking to Diana Redmayne, had been spent in thinking about her.

“It’s not because she’s pretty and clever,” he said; “and it’s not even because she’s a woman. It’s because she’s the only intelligent human being I’ve spoken to for nearly a year.”

So day after day he went on thinking about her.

It was three weeks later that the bell again creaked and jangled, and again through the spotted glass he saw a woman’s hat. To his infinite disgust and surprise, his heart began to beat violently.

“I grow nervous, living all alone,” he said. “Confound this door! how it does stick—I must have it planed.”

He got the door opened, and found himself face to face with—Camilla.

He stepped back, and bowed gravely.

She looked more beautiful than ever—and he looked at her, and wondered how he could ever have thought her even passably pretty.

“Won’t you ask me in?” she said timidly.

“No,” said he, “I am all alone.”


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“I know,” she said. “I have only just heard you’re living here all alone, and I came to say—Maurice—I’m sorry. I didn’t know you cared so much, or”

“Don’t,” he said, stopping the confession as a good batsman stops a cricket ball. “Believe me, I’ve not made myself a hermit because of—all that. I had a book to write—that was all. And—and it’s very kind of you to come and look me up, and I wish I could ask you to come in, but And it’s nice of you to take an interest in an old friend—you said you would, didn’t you, in the letter—and—I’ve taken the advice you gave me.”

“You mean you’ve fallen in love with some one else.”

“You remember what you said in your letter.”

“Some one nicer and worthier, I said,” returned Camilla blankly, “but I never thought And is she?”

“Of course she seems so to me,” said he, smiling at her to express friendly feeling.

“Then—good-bye—I wish you the best of good fortune.”

“You said that in your letter, too,” said he. “Good-bye.”


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“Who is she?”

“I mustn’t tell even you that, until I have told her,” he smiled again.

“Then good-bye,” said Camilla shortly; “forgive me for troubling you so unnecessarily.”

He found himself standing by his door—and Camilla on her bicycle sped down the road, choking with tears of anger and mortification and deep disappointment. Because she knew now that she loved him as much as it was in her to love any one, and because she, who had humbled so many, had now at last humbled herself—and to no purpose.

Maurice Brent left his door open and wandered down across his five acres, filled with amazement. Camilla herself had not been more deeply astonished at the words he had spoken than he had been. A moment before he had not even thought that he was in love, much less contemplated any confession of it: and now seemingly without his will he stood committed to this statement. Was it true, or had he only said it to defend himself against those advances of hers in which he merely saw a new trap? He had said it in defence—yes—but it was true, for all that; this was the wonderful part of it. And so


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 he walked in the wilderness, lost in wonder; and as he walked he noted the bicycles that passed his door—along his unfrequented road, by ones and twos and threes—for this was a Saturday, and the lower road was still lying cold and hidden under its load of chalk, and none might pass that way. This road was hot and dusty, and folk went along it continually. He strolled to his ugly iron gate and looked over, idly. Perhaps, some day, she would come that way again—she would surely stop—especially if he were at the gate—and perhaps stay and talk a little. As if in mocking answer to the new-born thought came a flash of blue along the road; Diana Redmayne rode by at full speed—bowed coldly—and then at ten yards’ distance turned and waved a white-gloved hand, with a charming smile. Maurice swore softly, and went indoors to think.

His work went but slowly on that day—and in the days that followed. On the next Friday he went over to Rochester, and in the dusk of the evening he walked along the road, about a mile from “The Yews,” and then, going slowly, he cast handfuls of something dark from his hand, and kicked the white dust over it as it lay.


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“I feel like the enemy sowing tares,” said he.

Then he went home, full of anxious anticipation. The next day was hot and bright. He took his armchair into the nightmare of a verandah, and sat there reading; only above the top of the book his eyes could follow the curve of the white road. This made it more difficult to follow the text. Presently the bicyclists began to go past, by ones and twos and threes; but a certain percentage was wheeling its machines—others stopped within sight to blow up their tyres. One man sat down under the hedge thirty yards away, and took his machine to pieces; presently he strolled up and asked for water. Brent gave it, in a tin basin, grudgingly, and without opening the gate.

“I overdid it,” he said, “a quarter of a pound would have been enough; yet I don’t know—perhaps it’s well to be on the safe side. Yet three pounds was perhaps excessive.”

Late in the afternoon a pink figure wheeling a bicycle came slowly down the road. He sat still, and tried to read. In a moment he should hear the click of the gate: then he would spring up and be very much astonished. But the gate did not click, and when next he raised his eyes the pink blouse


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 had gone by, and was almost past the end of the five acres. Then he did spring up—and ran.

“Miss Redmayne, can’t I help you? What is it? Have you had a spill?” he said as he overtook her.

“Puncture,” said she laconically.

“You’re very unfortunate. Mayn’t I help you to mend it?”

“I’ll mend it as soon as I get to a shady place.”

“Come into the wilderness. See—here’s the side gate. I’ll fetch some water in a moment.”

She looked at him doubtfully, and then consented. She refused tea, but she stayed and talked till long after the bicycle was mended.

On the following Saturday he walked along the road, and back, and along, and again the place was alive with angry cyclists dealing, each after his fashion, with a punctured tyre. He came upon Miss Redmayne sitting by the ditch mending hers. That was the time when he sat on the roadside and told her all about himself—reserving only those points where his life had touched Camilla’s.


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The week after he walked the road again, and this time he overtook Miss Redmayne, who was resolutely wheeling her bicycle back in the way by which she had come.

“Let me wheel it for you,” he said. “Whither bound?”

“I’m going back to Rochester,” she said. “I generally ride over to see my aunts at Felsenden on Saturdays, but I fear I must give it up, or go by train; this road isn’t safe.”

“Not safe?” he said with an agitation which could not escape her notice.

“Not safe,” she repeated. “Mr Brent, there is a very malicious person in this part of the country—a perfectly dreadful person.”

“What do you mean?” he managed to ask.

“These three Saturdays I have come along this road; each time I have had a puncture. And each time I have found embedded in my tyre the evidence of some one’s malice. This is one piece of evidence.” She held out her ungloved hand. On its pink palm lay a good sized tin-tack. “Once might be accident; twice a coincidence; three times is too much. The road’s impossible.”


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“Do you think some one did it on purpose?”

“I know it,” she said calmly.

Then he grew desperate.

“Try to forgive me,” he said. “I was so lonely, and I wanted so much”

She turned wide eyes on him.

“You!” she cried, and began to laugh.

Her laughter was very pretty, he thought.

“Then you didn’t know it was me?” said the Greek student.

“You!” she said again. “And has it amused you—to see all these poor people in difficulties, and to know that you’ve spoilt their poor little holiday for them—and three times, too.”

“I never thought about them,” he said; “it was you I wanted to see. Try to forgive me; you don’t know how much I wanted you.” Something in his voice kept her silent. “And don’t laugh,” he went on. “I feel as if I wanted nothing in the world but you. Let me come to see you—let me try to make you care too.”

“You’re talking nonsense,” she said, for he stopped on a note that demanded an answer. “Why, you told Camilla”

“Yes—but you—but I meant you. I


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 thought I cared about her once—but I never cared really with all my heart and soul for any one but you.”

She looked at him calmly and earnestly.

“I’m going to forget all this,” she said; “but I like you very much, and if you want to come and see me, you may. I will introduce you to my aunts at Felsenden as—as a friend of Camilla’s. And I will be friends with you; but nothing else ever. Do you care to know my aunts?”

Maurice had inspirations of sense sometimes. One came to him now, and he said: “I care very much.”

“Then help me to mend my bicycle, and you can call there to-morrow. It’s ‘The Grange’—you can’t miss it. No, not another word of nonsense, please, or we can’t possibly be friends.”

He helped her to mend the bicycle, and they talked of the beauty of spring and of modern poetry.

It was at “The Grange,” Felsenden, that Maurice next saw Miss Redmayne—and it was from “The Grange,” Felsenden, that, in September, he married her.


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“And why did you say you would never, never be anything but a friend?” he asked her on the day when that marriage was arranged. “Oh! you nearly made me believe you! Why did you say it?”

“One must say something!” she answered. “Besides, you’d never have respected me if I’d said ‘yes’ at once.”

“Could you have said it? Did you like me then?”

She looked at him, and her look was an answer. He stooped and gravely kissed her.

“And you really cared, even then? I wish you had been braver,” he said a little sadly.

“Ah, but,” she said, “I didn’t know you then—you must try to forgive me, dear. Think how much there was at stake! Suppose I had lost you!”


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 cards, and enjoying the fragrance and refreshing coolness of the evening air.

Olivia gave an account of their excursion; and made de Sevignie colour highly by hinting at the manner in which they had met him, and at what she had heard from the nurse concerning him.

The light gave Madeline an opportunity of observing the strong expression of grief his countenance betrayed: he seemed even more altered than when she had before seen him. Pale and languid, the fire of his eyes was fled, and the discomposure of his hair, which the mountain breeze had blown carelessly about his face, heightened its sad expression. He appeared no longer desirous to shun her; on the contrary, he betrayed the strongest anxiety to be near her: but, notwithstanding her pity, her affection for him, pride determined her to avoid attentions which she imputed to the mere impulse of unguarded tenderness: for she could


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 not bear to be one day the object of his particular notice, and the next of his pointed neglect. She accordingly placed herself at the card-table, in such a manner as to prevent his sitting by her; and, with a look of unutterable disappointment, he turned away, and entered into conversation with Olivia, if that could be called conversation, which consisted, on one side, of laconic answers, and, on the other, of questions relative to the motives which made him so fond of solitary rambles.

Unable to bear the dejection of his looks, Madeline fixed her eyes upon the card-table, as if intently watching the game, though in reality she knew not what was played. But she could not, by this measure, save her heart from one pang; for, though her eye was averted from the melancholy of his countenance, her ear was still open to the soft melancholy of his voice; and scarcely could she conceal the emotions it gave her. The entrance of a servant with a letter to her, that instant


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 come from the Countess de Merville, somewhat relieved her from this painful situation. She started up; and, retiring to a little distance from the table, read as follows:—

To mademoiselle Clermont. "Will my dear Madeline return to-morrow to solitude and her friend. She may accuse me of selfishness for so soon recalling her; and perhaps with justice, considering the pleasure and benefit attending her return will be so materially on my side: but, as it is a failing so prevalent among mankind, I trust, from its being so general, it may be excused. I cannot, as I intended, call for her; but shall hope and expect to receive from the hands of Madame Chatteneuf, and her amiable daughter, the precious charge I entrusted to her care. The natural eloquence of my Madeline will, I trust, prevent any disappointment; who, in believing me her sincere friend, will only do justice to "


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 Madeline guessed the purpose of this letter ere she opened it, consequently it gave her no surprise. She placed her friend's anxiety for her return to the account of de Sevignie, whom she knew she wished her to avoid; a wish she felt it necessary to comply with, if she desired the return of tranquillity.

She handed the letter to Madame Chatteneuf; who, fearful it contained some unpleasant tidings, had laid aside her cards the moment it was brought in. Her regret and Olivia's at losing her so soon, was expressed in the most flattering terms; and they promised to attend her to the chateau the next morning. A heavy sigh from de Sevignie at this moment reached her ear. She involuntarily raised her eyes, but again bent them to the ground, on perceiving his fastened on her with the most melancholy earnestness.


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 The Countess's servant she was told waited for an answer; and she now hastened to the house to give one. In the hall she met him, and had the satisfaction of hearing that his lady was well. Her answer finished, she would have preferred retiring to her chamber to returning to the company, so oppressed was her heart, but that she knew her doing so would excite enquiries, and perhaps unpleasant remarks.

Slowly she pursued her way back to the banqueting house, and had reached the centre of the long and darkly shaded walk which led to it; when a sudden rustling among the trees on one side, made her pause, from a sensation of fear, and an uncertainty whether by advancing or retreating she should put herself more in the way of danger, if indeed, any threatened her; the pain of suspense was however terminated in a minute by the appearance of de Sevignie. She started; and his thus seeming to watch for her, gave her emotions which agitated her whole frame;


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 she tried however to check them, and was again proceeding when he stopped her—

"Will you not bid me farewell then (said he in a reproachful voice), ere we part?"

"Part! (repeated Madeline) don't you sup with Madame Chatteneuf?"

"No; I feel myself extremely ill, and have just apologised to her. You return then to-morrow (he continued), to the chateau; and you know not perhaps when you may revisit this town?"

"No (said Madeline), I do not."

"To me indeed, it is of little consequence to know (cried he), for I propose to leave it soon myself; would to heaven I had done so some days ago. Yet how can I tear myself from a place where I know there is a chance of beholding you:—oh, Madeline, to do so requires a resolution I am scarcely master of."

"I dare say (exclaimed Madeline, endeavouring to rally her spirits, and disengage the hand which he had taken between his), you'll


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 not find any great difficulty in acquiring such a resolution."

"You doubt my sincerity then (still detaining her); oh! would to heaven I could, I durst convince you of it: yet, alas, why do I utter such a wish, when I know not whether that conviction would be of any consequence to you; know not, do I say?—your altered manner too plainly assures me that it would not."

"Pray let me go (cried Madeline, inexpressibly agitated); I am impatient to return to Madame Chatteneuf, for I know she will wonder at my long absence."

"Go then, madam (said de Sevignie, instantly dropping her hand);—go, madam to the happy beings you regard, and excuse my having detained you so long from them: I see you are displeased at my having done so; I see my society is hateful to you. There was a period when---(he paused, then again proceeded)—when I imagined Madeline Clermont would rather have sought to mitigate than fly from the sorrows of a friend; would


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 have enjoyed an exquisite pleasure in fulfilling the claim, the sacred claim, which misery has upon compassion."

"Oh, de Sevignie (thought Madeline), how little do you know my heart when you thus reproach me. Your society hateful to me!—alas 'tis infinitely too precious for my peace."

"I am sure (said she, speaking with almost as much agitation as he had done), I am sure—I wish—I should be happy was it in my power, to remove, to lessen any sorrow you may feel."

"You wish—you should be happy—(he repeated in a softened voice, as if touched by her gentleness).—Yes, Madeline (again taking her hand), I am convinced of the sincerity of that wish; and nothing, no, nothing but a degree of madness could have tempted me to reproach you as I have just done;—could have tempted me to ask your pity for feelings which I wished, from principles of honour, gratitude, generosity, to conceal from you. Oh, Madeline, I cannot ask your


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 pardon, for I cannot myself pardon my conduct to you."

"Unasked would I give it (cried Madeline), had I been offended, but that be assured is not the case."

At this instant a distant step was heard; both started; and Madeline instantly attempted to disengage herself.

"Do not leave me yet (cried de Sevignie), it may be long ere we meet again; long do I say? alas, we may never, never meet again!—Spare a few minutes longer to me; let us turn into this walk (pointing to the one he had just emerged from), and we shall not be observed; though I said but an instant ago, I would not solicit your pity, yet my heart now tells me, that an assurance of it can only mitigate its wretchedness."

"Receive that assurance then (said Madeline, making another effort as she gave it to withdraw her hand; for, though she wished, she feared to comply with his request. Her


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 reason opposed her inclination for doing so, by representing the folly, the impropriety of any longer listening to the dictates of a passion which she had cause to believe a hopeless one). But excuse me (she continued) from staying any longer with you; the step which alarmed us approaches, and I should be sorry we were seen together."

"Farewell! then (he exclaimed), most lovely and most beloved; I regret, but cannot murmur at your refusal: may the happiness you deserve be yours, and be not only pure as your virtues, but lasting as your life: may every change in that life, be to raise you to still higher felicity: and when you make that great that important change which will fix its destiny;—when you give the precious hand I now hold to some happy, some highly-favoured mortal, some peculiar favourite of heaven,—oh, may you then meet with a heart as tenderly, as firmly devoted to you as de Sevignie's." These last words were spoken almost in a whisper; and Madeline felt by his hands the tremor of his frame.