But there was this wonderful feature in her work,—­that nobody suspected her; no one, not even her own child.  She wanted Henrietta, as little as the world, to know what she was to her husband; and she taught her not only to love him as her father, but to respect and admire him as a man of eminence.  Of course, the count was the very last man to suspect any thing.  He might have been told all, and he would have believed nothing.

He fancied he had discovered himself the whole line of proceeding which his wife had so carefully traced out for him.  In the full sincerity of his heart, he believed he had composed and written out the speeches which she drew up for him; and the articles for the newspapers, and the letters, which she dictated, appeared to him all to have sprung from his own fertile brains.  He was even sometimes surprised at the want of good sense in his wife, and pointed out to her, quite ironically, that the steps from which she tried hardest to dissuade him were the most successful he took.  But no irony could turn the countess from the path which she had traced out for herself; nor did she ever allow a word or even a smile to escape her, that might have betrayed her secret.  When her husband became sarcastic, she bowed her head, and said nothing.  But, the more he gloried in his utter nullity, the more she delighted in her work, and found ample compensation in the approval of her own conscience.

The count had been so exceedingly good as to take her when she was penniless; she owed him the historic name she bore and a large fortune; but, in return, she had given him, and without his being aware of it, a position of some eminence.  She had made him happy in the only way in which a small and ordinary man could be made happy,—­by gratifying his vanity.

Now she was no longer under obligations to him.

“Yes,” she said to herself, “we are quits, fairly quits!”

Now also, she reproached herself no longer for the long hours during which her thoughts, escaping from the control of her will, had turned to the man of her early choice.

Poor fellow!  She had been his evil star.

His life had been imbittered from the day on which he found himself forsaken by her whom he loved better than life itself.  He had given up every thing.

His parents had “hunted up” an heiress, as they called it, and he had married her dutifully.  But the good old people had been unlucky.  The bride, chosen among a thousand, had brought their son a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars; but she was a bad woman.  And after eight years of wretched, intolerable married life, Peter Champcey had shot himself, unable to bear any longer his domestic misfortunes, and the infidelity of his wife.

He had, however, avoided committing this crime at Angers, where he held a high official position.  He had gone to Rosiers, the house formerly occupied by Pauline’s mother; and there, in a narrow lane, his body was found by some peasants coming home from market.  The ball had so fearfully disfigured his face, that at first no one recognized him; and the accident made a terrible sensation.