Foreseeing a duel, the impertinent man made his excuses; and his experience put the rest of them on their guard.  But their opinions remained unchanged; open war only changed into secret opposition, that was all.

Fate, however, always more kind than man, held a reward in store for Count Ville-Handry, which amply repaid him for his heroism in marrying a poor girl.  An uncle of his wife’s, a banker at Dresden, died, and left his “beloved niece Pauline” half a million dollars.  This immensely wealthy man, who had never assisted his sister in her troubles, and who would have disinherited the daughter of a soldier of fortune, had been flattered by the idea of writing in his last will the name of his niece, the “high and mighty Countess Ville-Handry.”

This unexpected piece of good-fortune ought to have delighted the young wife.  She might now have had her vengeance on all her miserable slanderers, and enjoyed a boundless popularity.  But far from it.  She had never appeared more sad than on the day when the great news reached her.

For on that very day she for the first time cursed her marriage.  A voice within her warned her that she ought never to have yielded to the entreaties and the orders of her mother.  An excellent daughter, as she was to become the best of mothers, and the most faithful of wives, she had sacrificed herself.  And now an accident made all her sacrifices useless, and punished her for having done her duty.

Ah, why had she not resisted, at least for the purpose of gaining time?

For when she was a girl she had dreamed of a very different future.  Long before giving herself to the count, she had, of her own free will, given her heart to another.  She had bestowed her first and warmest affections upon a young man who was only two or three years older than she,—­Peter Champcey, the son of one of those marvellously rich farmers who live in the valley of the Loire.

He worshipped her.  Unfortunately one obstacle had risen between them from the beginning,—­Pauline’s poverty.  It could not be expected that those keen, thrifty peasants, Champcey’s father and mother, would ever permit one of their sons—­they had two—­to commit the folly of making a love-match.

They had worked hard for their children.  The oldest, Peter, was to be a lawyer; the other, Daniel, who wanted to become a sailor, was studying day and night to prepare for his examination.  And the old couple were not a little proud of these “gentlemen,” their sons.  They told everybody who would listen, that, in return for the costly education they were giving them, they expected them to marry large fortunes.

Peter knew his parents so well, that he never mentioned Pauline to them.

“When I am of age,” he said to himself, “it will be a different matter.”

Alas!  Why had not Pauline’s mother waited at least till then?

Poor young girl!  On the day on which she entered the castle of Ville-Handry, she had sworn she would bury this love of hers so deep in the innermost recesses of her heart, that it should never come up and trouble her thoughts.  And she had kept her word.