“Why, my poor girl, I would do anything in the world for you.  Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I know you cannot leave Paris now, and so you cannot, yourself, take me to England; but I wish to go there; I wish you to send me there to Hereward Hold, where we passed so many peaceful months.”

“To send you there alone, Valerie?” inquired the duke, in surprise.

“No, but with my personal attendants, and with any discreet old lady you may choose to appoint as my companion, if, like an old Spanish husband, you think your young wife may require watching when she is out of your sight,” she added, with a relapse into her irritable mood.

“Valerie! you wrong me and yourself by such a thought,” said the duke, gravely.

“I know I do, and I know I am a wretch! but I want to go to England.  I want to get away from everybody, and be by myself.  You promised to do what I wanted done.  That is what I want done.”

“Do you wish ‘to get away’ from me, Valerie?”

“Yes, from you and from everybody, except from my servants, who are not my companions, and therefore don’t bore me.”

“It must be as I thought,” said the duke to himself; “all this eccentricity, this nervous irritability has a natural cause, and not an alarming one, and it must be humored.”

“Will you keep your promise?” she testily inquired.

“Certainly, my dear child.  Anything to please you.  You will see Velpeau this afternoon.  If after consulting him you still think it necessary to leave Paris for Hereward Hold, I will send you there under proper protection.  By the by, you succeed very well in getting away from your friends I think.  The Count de Volaski called here while you were away this forenoon.  He seemed disappointed in not seeing you.  He looks ill.  I never saw a man change so within the last few days.  I should not wonder if he were on the very verge of a bad fever.  I wish you had seen him.  He was quite a friend of yours in St. Petersburg, I believe.”

“I used to see him every day in the public assemblies to which we were always going.  I wish you wouldn’t talk about him,” gasped Valerie, with a nervous shudder, as she arose and left the room.

“What a little misanthrope she has grown to be; but it is only a temporary affliction.  She will get over it in a few weeks,” said the duke to himself, as he resumed the reading of his newspaper.

The next day Valerie arose at her usual hour, and breakfasted tete-a-tete with the duke.  She knew that this day must decide her fate, and she tried to nerve herself to bear all that it might bring her, even as the frailest women sometimes brace themselves to bear torture and death.

At eleven in the forenoon, the duke left the house to go to the Hotel de Ville to keep an appointment that would detain him until three in the afternoon.

Valerie knew all about this appointment, and had therefore fixed the hour of noon as the safest time for her interview with the count.