“I write to Madame Raynal at the post-office, Frejus,” said she.

“And Madame Raynal gets your letters?”

“Of course she does, since she answers them; you cannot have inquired at the post.”

“Why, it was the first place I inquired at, and neither Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire nor Madame Raynal were known there.”

Jacintha, who could have given the clew, seemed so puzzled herself, that they did not even apply to her.  Edouard took a sorrowful leave of the baroness, and set out on his journey home.

Oh! how sad and weary that ride seemed now by what it had been coming.  His disappointment was deep and irritating; and ere he had ridden half way a torturer fastened on his heart.  That torture is suspicion; a vague and shadowy, but gigantic phantom that oppresses and rends the mind more terribly than certainty.  In this state of vague, sickening suspicion, he remained some days:  then came an affectionate letter from Rose, who had actually returned home.  In this she expressed her regret and disappointment at having missed him; blamed herself for misleading him, but explained that their stay at Frejus had been prolonged from day to day far beyond her expectation.  “The stupidity of the post-office was more than she could account for,” said she.  But, what went farthest to console Edouard, was, that after this contretemps she never ceased to invite him to come to Beaurepaire.  Now, before this, though she said many kind and pretty things in her letters, she had never invited him to visit the chateau; he had noticed this.  “Sweet soul,” thought he, “she really is vexed.  I must be a brute to think any more about it.  Still”—­

So this wound was skinned over.

At last, what he called his lucky star ordained that he should be transferred to the very post his Commandant Raynal had once occupied.  He sought and obtained permission to fix his quarters in the little village near Beaurepaire, and though this plan could not be carried out for three months, yet the prospect of it was joyful all that time—­joyful to both lovers.  Rose needed this consolation, for she was very unhappy:  her beloved sister, since their return from Frejus, had gone back.  The flush of health was faded, and so was her late energy.  She fell into deep depression and languor, broken occasionally by fits of nervous irritation.

She would sit for hours together at one window languishing and fretting.  Can the female reader guess which way that window looked?

Now, Edouard was a favorite of Josephine’s; so Rose hoped he would help to distract her attention from those sorrows which a lapse of years alone could cure.

On every account, then, his visit was looked forward to with hope and joy.

He came.  He was received with open arms.  He took up his quarters at his old lodgings, but spent his evenings and every leisure hour at the chateau.

He was very much in love, and showed it.  He adhered to Rose like a leech, and followed her about like a little dog.