“What have I to say?  My father forgave me on his death-bed, and I pardon you.”

“Farewell, Norbert; we shall see no more of each other.  I am going to marry, as you have doubtless been informed.  Can I oppose my parent’s will?  Besides, what does it signify?  Farewell; remember no one wishes more sincerely for your future happiness than I do.”

“Happy!” exclaimed Norbert.  “How can I ever be happy again?  If you know the secret, for pity’s sake break it to me.  Tell me how to forget and how to annihilate thought.  Do you not know that I had planned a life of perfect happiness with you by my side?  I had visions; and now plans and visions are alike hateful to me.  And as they ever and anon recur to my memory, they will fill me with terror and despair.”

As Diana heard these words of agony, a wild gleam of triumph shot from her eyes, but it faded away quickly, and left her cold and emotionless as a marble statue; and when she reappeared in the drawing-room, after taking leave of Norbert, her face wore so satisfied an expression, that the Viscount complimented her upon her apparent happiness.

She made some jesting retort, but there was a shade of earnestness mixed with her playfulness, for to her future husband she only wished to show the amiable side of her character; but all the time she was thinking.  Will Norbert see Daumon in time?

The Duke kept his word, and the next day the faithful Jean discreetly handed her a packet.  She opened it and found that besides the two letters of which the Counsellor had spoken, it contained all her correspondence with Norbert—­more than a hundred letters in all, some of great length, and all of them compromising to a certain extent.  Her first thought was to destroy them, but on reflection she decided not to do so, and hid the packet in the same place as she had concealed the letters written by Norbert to her.

Norbert had given Daumon sixty thousand francs, and in addition owed him twenty thousand on his promissory notes.  This sum, in addition to what he had already saved, would form such a snug little fortune that it would enable the Counsellor to quit Bevron, and take up his abode in Paris, where his peculiar talents would have more scope for development.  And eight days later the village was thrown into a state of intense excitement by the fact becoming known that Daumon had shut up his house and departed for Paris, taking Francoise, the Widow Rouleau’s daughter, with him.  The Widow Rouleau was furious, and openly accused Mademoiselle de Laurebourg of having aided in the committal of the act which had deprived her of her daughter’s services in her declining years; and the old woman who had acted as housekeeper, who on Daumon’s departure had thrown open the place, did not hesitate to assert that all her late master’s legal lore had been acquired in prison, where he had undergone a sentence of ten years’ penal servitude.

In spite of all this, however, Mademoiselle de Laurebourg was secretly delighted at the departure of Daumon and Francoise; for she experienced an intense feeling of relief at knowing that she no longer was in any risk of meeting her accomplice in her daily walks.  Norbert, too, was going to Paris with his wife; and M. de Puymandour was going about saying that his daughter, the Duchess of Champdoce, would not return to this part of the country for some time to come.