“I shall not go,” I said.

“Have you never discovered,” she said with lofty pride, “that certain propitiations are insulting?  Go!”

I rode towards Lady Dudley wishing to know the state of her mind.  “If she would only be angry and leave me,” I thought, “I could return to Clochegourde.”

The dog led me to an oak, from which, as I came up, Arabella galloped crying out to me, “Come! away! away!” All that I could do was to follow her to Saint Cyr, which we reached about midnight.

“That lady is in perfect health,” said Arabella as she dismounted.

Those who know her can alone imagine the satire contained in that remark, dryly said in a tone which meant, “I should have died!”

“I forbid you to utter any of your sarcasms about Madame de Mortsauf,” I said.

“Do I displease your Grace in remarking upon the perfect health of one so dear to your precious heart?  Frenchwomen hate, so I am told, even their lover’s dog.  In England we love all that our masters love; we hate all they hate, because we are flesh of their flesh.  Permit me therefore to love this lady as much as you yourself love her.  Only, my dear child,” she added, clasping me in her arms which were damp with rain, “if you betray me, I shall not be found either lying down or standing up, not in a carriage with liveried lackeys, nor on horseback on the moors of Charlemagne, nor on any other moor beneath the skies, nor in my own bed, nor beneath a roof of my forefathers; I shall not be anywhere, for I will live no longer.  I was born in Lancashire, a country where women die for love.  Know you, and give you up?  I will yield you to none, not even to Death, for I should die with you.”

She led me to her rooms, where comfort had already spread its charms.

“Love her, dear,” I said warmly.  “She loves you sincerely, not in jest.”

“Sincerely! you poor child!” she said, unfastening her habit.

With a lover’s vanity I tried to exhibit Henriette’s noble character to this imperious creature.  While her waiting-woman, who did not understand a word of French, arranged her hair I endeavored to picture Madame de Mortsauf by sketching her life; I repeated many of the great thoughts she had uttered at a crisis when nearly all women become either petty or bad.  Though Arabella appeared to be paying no attention she did not lose a single word.

“I am delighted,” she said when we were alone, “to learn your taste for pious conversation.  There’s an old vicar on one of my estates who understands writing sermons better than any one I know; the country-people like him, for he suits his prosing to his hearers.  I’ll write to my father to-morrow and ask him to send the good man here by steamboat; you can meet him in Paris, and when once you have heard him you will never wish to listen to any one else,—­all the more because his health is perfect.  His moralities won’t give you shocks that make you weep; they flow along