Then, with sudden animation: 

“But what did I say?  Did I speak at all?”

“You said, ‘I am cold!’ and away you went!”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Did you think I was dead?”

“I did hope for a moment that you were,” said Lucan, coldly.

“How horrid of you!  But we were talking before that.  What were we saying?”

“We were making a pact of amity and friendship.”

“Well! it doesn’t look much like it now, Monsieur de Lucan!”

“Madam?”

“You seem positively angry with me because I fainted.”

“Of course I am.  In the first place, I don’t like that sort of adventures, and then, it is wholly your own fault; you are so imprudent, so unreasonable!”

“Oh! mon Dieu!  Don’t you want a switch?”

And as the lights of the chateau were coming into sight: 

“Apropos, don’t trouble mother with any of that nonsense, will you?”

“Certainly not; you may rest easy on that score.”

“You are just as cross as you can be, you know?”

“Probably I am; but I have just spent there a few minutes so very painful.”

“I pity you with all my heart,” said Julia, dryly.

She threw off her vail in the vestibule, and returned to the parlor.

The Baroness de Pers, who was to leave early the next day, had already retired.  Julia performed some four-handed pieces on the piano with her mother.  Monsieur de Lucan took the place of the “dummy” at the whist table, and the evening ended quietly.

CHAPTER VII.

VICTORY AND DEFEAT.

The next morning, Clotilde was preparing to accompany her mother to the station in the carriage; Monsieur de Lucan, detained at the chateau by a business appointment, was present to take leave of his mother-in-law.  He remarked the thoughtful countenance of the baroness; she was silent, much against her habit, and she cast embarrassed looks upon him; she approached him several times with a constrained smile and confidential manner, but confined herself to addressing to him a few commonplace words.  Availing herself at last of a moment when Clotilde was giving some orders, she leaned out of the carriage-window, and, pressing significantly Monsieur de Lucan’s hand: 

“Be true and faithful to her, sir!” she said.

The carriage started almost immediately, but not before he had had time to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.

The matter that was engrossing Monsieur de Lucan’s attention at the time, and on the subject of which he had had a long conversation that very morning with his lawyer and his advocate, who had come over from Caen during the night, was an old family law-suit which the mayor of Vastville, an ambitious personage and restless busy-body, had taken pride in bringing to light again.  The question at issue was a claim