“He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they make, and is quite happy; he leads a very fast life.”

As we were slowly going back, both of us silent and rather low-spirited, an English dog cart, drawn by a thoroughbred horse, came up behind us, and passed us rapidly.  The doctor took me by the arm.

“There he is,” he said.

I saw nothing except a gray felt hat, cocked over one ear, above a pair of broad shoulders, driving off in a cloud of dust.

ABANDONED

“I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as this.  You have had some very strange ideas for the last two months.  You take me to the sea side in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been married.  You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to go into the country on the hottest day in the year.  Ask d’Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify all your fancies.  As for me, I am going back to have a nap.”

Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said: 

“Will you come with me, Monsieur d’Apreval?”

He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of by-gone years: 

“I will go wherever you go,” he replied.

“Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke,” Monsieur de Cadour said; and he went back to the Hotel des Bains, to lie down on his bed for an hour or two.

As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off, and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand: 

“At last! at last!”

“You are mad,” he said in a whisper.  “I assure you that you are mad.  Think of the risk you are running.  If that man ...”

She started.

“Oh!  Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him.”

“Very well,” he said abruptly, “if our son guesses anything, if he has any suspicions, he will have you, he will have us both in his power.  You have got on without seeing him for the last forty years; what is the matter with you to-day?”

They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea to the town, and now they turned to the right, to go to Etretat.  The white road extended in front of them, under a blaze of brilliant sunshine, so they went on slowly in the burning heat.  She had taken her old friend’s arm, and was looking straight in front of her, with a fixed and haunted gaze, and at last she said: 

“And so you have not seen him again, either?”

“No, never.”

“Is it possible?”

“My dear friend, do not let us begin that discussion again.  I have a wife and children and you have a husband, so we both of us have much to fear from other people’s opinion.”