| | 105

CHAPTER IX.

THAT evening, as dinner was concluded, Adrienne turned to her husband.

"And how was old Brizeaux?" she asked eagerly. "Does he feel his son's absence very much?"

Armand de Valtour hesitated a moment. He had never been to the tower--never remembered his promise to call on the old man.

"I did not see him," he said at last. "He was out somewhere in the fields."

"Did you see little Maï--did you give her my message?" asked his sister.

"Yes, she will be here this evening."

"Poor old Brizeaux, I wish you had seen him. He is in sad trouble, I hear," said Adrienne regretfully. "May I go to-morrow morning, Armand?"

"Certainly, if you wish," he answered indifferently. "But I suppose he is all right now. He was vexed at first, naturally. But then he should not have been so obstinate. André will do better in Paris than ever he could have done here."

"I hope so," said Adrienne, with a sigh, "But here, at least, he was safe, and happy, and beloved."

"That might content a woman," said her husband, | | 106 rising from the table as he spoke. "A man needs something more."

A short time after, when the two women were in the salon, Céline de Valtour noticed how wistfully her young sister's eyes turned to the terrace, where in the moonlight a solitary figure passed to and fro; the red light of his cigar shone star-like through the dusk.

"Why do you not go to him, Adrienne?" she asked, pausing in the mysteries of Chopin, and letting her fingers stray mechanically over the keys, while she watched the beautiful grave face.

The girl started, and shook her head.

"He does not ask me to come now," she said, sadly.

"But, my dear, a wife must not always wait to be asked. She has a right to be with her husband when she pleases. Armand does not specially invite your company; all the same, I am sure, he would be glad enough of it. Come, these are early days for coldness. You are lovers still. Go to him and join him in his walk, and I will play to you here, as I did the first evening after your return."

Adrienne only sighed.

"He always used to ask me then," she said. "A month--only one little month ago. Ah, Céline, where do I fail? He does not love me now as he did then."

"Do not fancy that, my dear," said the old lady kindly. "I am sure he loves you very dearly. But | | 107 you don't know much of men; you must make allowances for them always. Their love is so different to ours. And my brother is much older that you; he has lived so different a life; his thought and feelings and associations naturally fall into their old groove."

"I thought to be a companion to him as well as wife," said Adrienne slowly. "I begin to see my mistake. I suppose in time I shall grow content. I shall learn the lesson all women have to learn--the difference between a lover and husband!"

She spoke bitterly, moved by a sudden pain--almost a fear--in her own proud, loving heart. If, indeed, she had to learn that lesson, the learning would be at once terrible and full of humiliation. Her dreams and hopes had all been of a life so widely different.

Other women, other wives, have had such dreams and awakened to a reality as opposite.

Adrienne had begun to feel this, but with the feeling she knew there was no escape. She had chosen her lot; she must abide by that choice for all her life now.

So she said no more; only sat there by the window looking out at her husband's figure, while the strain of music rose and fell in the quiet, lamp-lit room.

"Perhaps I shall understand him better in time, she thought. "I love him so--I must not--cannot fail."

| | 108

She scarcely dared allow to herself that they were already drifting apart; that between his heart and hers was a shadow, faint, and yet perceptible to the keen, clear sight of love. It saddened her--she scarcely knew why; it was always about her now, and she had not been two months a wife.

Would it fade and grow less, or deepen and darken until it stood between her and the love that she had deemed so perfect?

Time alone would show--time, that slowly and surely ripens all things to their given end, and brings consolation even to despair.

But Adrienne was young, and her heart still throbbed and thrilled with passionate love, and she was ready to throw herself at her husband's feet and pray for the tenderness that had once been hers. Her own beauty, her own gifts of intelligence, probity, honour, sweetness, and trust seemed as nothing in her sight--nothing to claim his wandering allegiance, or keep his love steadfast. Marriage had changed her in much; she felt years older than on that summer morning when she had stood on the sands at Trouville and watched the shining water at her feet, while beside her stood the man into whose keeping her life was to pass--the man who even then bore for her so singular an attraction.

"He loved me then," she thought. "Have I changed? Am I unlike what he imagined?"

For she was still far from comprehending the restlessness and variability of character in the man she | | 109 had married, and by her own steadfastness she judged his.

While these thoughts were still in her mind, he crossed the terrace and came up to the open window by which she sat.

"Adrienne," he said abruptly, "I am going to run up to Paris on business. I leave to-morrow!"

"But you will take me; you will not leave me here alone?" cried Adrienne, springing to her feet and clinging to his arm as she spoke.

He laughed a little impatiently. "No," he said, "I only go for a week at most. You must remain here."

"But, Armand--"

"Do not urge me," he answered coldly. "I must go alone."

Her hands fell from his arm. She turned away and went indoors without another word.

She was too proud to plead; she only knew she was not wanted; that her husband could leave her coldly and unregretfully, and she not two months his wife!