The world might easily be silenced, because M. de Camors never had been very demonstrative in public toward his wife, and his courteous but reserved manner toward her did not vary from his habitual demeanor.  He remained two days at Reuilly.

Madame de Tecle vainly waited for these two days for a slight explanation, which she did not wish to demand, but which she hoped for.

What were the terrible circumstances which had overruled the will of M. de Camors, to the point of making him forget the most sacred sentiments?  When her thoughts plunged into this dread mystery, they never approached the truth.  M. de Camors might have committed this base action under the menace of some great danger to save the fortune, the honor, probably the life of Madame de Campvallon.  This, though a poor excuse in the mother’s eyes, still was an extenuation.  Probably also he had in his heart, while marrying her daughter, the resolution to break off this fatal liaison, which he had again resumed against his will, as often happens.  On all these painful points she dwelt after the departure of M. de Camors, as she had previous to his arrival; confined to her own conjectures, when she suggested to her daughter the most consolatory appearances.  It was agreed upon that Madame de Camors should remain in the country until her health was reestablished:  only her husband expressed the desire that she should reside ordinarily on his estate at Reuilly, the chateau on which had recently been restored with the greatest taste.

Madame de Tecle felt the propriety of this arrangement.  She herself abandoned the old habitation of the Comte de Tecle, to install herself near her daughter in the modest chateau which belonged to the maternal ancestors of M. de Camors, and which we have already described in another place, with its solemn avenue, its balustrades of granite, its labyrinths of hornbeams and the black fishpond, shaded with poplars.

Both dwelt there in the midst of their sweetest and most pleasant souvenirs; for this little chateau, so long deserted—­the neglected woods which surrounded it the melancholy piece of water—­the solitary nymph all this had been their particular domain, the favorite framework of their reveries, the legend of their infancy, the poetry of their youth.  It was doubtless a great grief to revisit again, with tearful eyes and wounded hearts and heads bowed by the storms of life, the familiar paths where they once knew happiness and peace.  But, nevertheless, all these dear confidants of past joys, of blasted hopes, of vanished dreams—­if they are mournful witnesses they are also friends.  We love them; and they seem to love us.  Thus these two poor women, straying amid these woods, these waters, these solitudes, bearing with them their incurable wounds, fancied they heard voices which pitied them and breathed a healing sympathy.  The most cruel trial reserved to Madame de Camors in the life which she had the courage and judgment to adopt, was assuredly the duty of again seeing the Marquise de Campvallon, and preserving with her such relations as might blind the eyes of the General and of the world.