“No,” I replied, “and in future I am to have six months’ leave, which will always be spent here—­Why, what is the matter?” I said to the countess, putting my arm round her waist and holding her up in presence of them all.

“Oh, don’t!” she said, springing away from me; “it is nothing.”

I read her mind, and answered to its secret thought by saying, “Am I not allowed to be your faithful slave?”

She took my arm, left the count, the children, and the abbe, and led me to a distance on the lawn, though still within sight of the others; then, when sure that her voice could not be heard by them, she spoke.

“Felix, my dear friend,” she said, “forgive my fears; I have but one thread by which to guide me in the labyrinth of life, and I dread to see it broken.  Tell me that I am more than ever Henriette to you, that you will never abandon me, that nothing shall prevail against me, that you will ever be my devoted friend.  I have suddenly had a glimpse into my future, and you were not there, as hitherto, your eyes shining and fixed upon me—­”

“Henriette! idol whose worship is like that of the Divine,—­lily, flower of my life, how is it that you do not know, you who are my conscience, that my being is so fused with yours that my soul is here when my body is in Paris?  Must I tell you that I have come in seventeen hours, that each turn of the wheels gathered thoughts and desires in my breast, which burst forth like a tempest when I saw you?”

“Yes, tell me! tell me!” she cried; “I am so sure of myself that I can hear you without wrong.  God does not will my death.  He sends you to me as he sends his breath to his creatures; as he pours the rain of his clouds upon a parched earth,—­tell me! tell me!  Do you love me sacredly?”

“Sacredly.”

“For ever?”

“For ever.”

“As a virgin Mary, hidden behind her veil, beneath her white crown.”

“As a virgin visible.”

“As a sister?”

“As a sister too dearly loved.”

“With chivalry and without hope?”

“With chivalry and with hope.”

“As if you were still twenty years of age, and wearing that absurd blue coat?”

“Oh better far!  I love you thus, and I also love you”—­she looked at me with keen apprehension—­“as you loved your aunt.”

“I am happy!  You dispel my terrors,” she said, returning towards the family, who were surprised at our private conference.  “Be still a child at Clochegourde—­for you are one still.  It may be your policy to be a man with the king, but here, let me tell you, monsieur, your best policy is to remain a child.  As a child you shall be loved.  I can resist a man, but to a child I can refuse nothing, nothing!  He can ask for nothing I will not give him.—­Our secrets are all told,” she said, looking at the count with a mischievous air, in which her girlish, natural self reappeared.  “I leave you now; I must go and dress.”