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CHAPTER XVII.

THE season went on its way, and the tide of fashionable life went with it. The waste, the magnificence, the fatigue of it all wearied and sickened Adrienne. She scarcely ever saw her husband now alone. She knew that he avoided her purposely, and she could not bring herself to plead for the devotion of past times.

Of late a strange, sweet hope had come to her--something she hardly dared whisper to herself as a certainty, but it gave new life to her heart, a fuller, richer beauty to her face. "When he knows," she told herself, "he will forget all this coldness and estrangement. He will be glad as I am myself."

She knew nothing of what the world said of him--nothing of the rumours respecting him and the little Laurent--nothing of Madame Lissac's triumph as she saw her scheme of vengeance slowly approaching completion, and waited till it should be ripe for the finishing touch.

One warm evening in May Adrienne was sitting alone in her boudoir. She had returned from paying some visits, and was resting herself till dinner-time. After that there would be half-a-dozen entertainments awaiting her selection. How weary she was of it all!

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Presently her maid entered with some tea and a salver of letters, which she placed on the table beside her young mistress. Adrienne took them up indifferently. One was from Céline. She read that eagerly and with interest. It always pleased her to hear of Valtours. She laid it aside at last. A little smile curved her lips. She would be soon going back to the château now, and how pleased Céline would be when she heard.

Her fingers had mechanically broken open another envelope. Her eyes fell on the lines traced by a strange and unknown hand. She sat as if suddenly turned to stone. Her face grew ghastly in its pallor.

Adrienne never knew if it was an hour or a moment that she sat there with that letter in her hands, and that crushing, numbing sense of misery weighing upon her heart.

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She struggled to shake it off, but it seemed to hold her like a nightmare. In one instant all the fabric of her love and belief seemed swept away--a cruel hand led her to the abyss on which she stood.

She felt sick and cold; she went over to the window, open to the balmy night, and let the air blow over her face.

The lights of the city glittered everywhere. The city that in her girlish dreams she had imagined as a paradise of beauty--that now seemed to hold the grave of every fair and blissful dream her life had ever known.

She bent her face on her clasped and shuddering hands. She had been so blind--so trustful, and was this her recompense? The thought seemed to rouse her once more. The blood flushed hotly to her brow--the shame and horror and loathing that filled her soul stung her pride, and gave her back her strength.

"I will see for myself," she said fiercely. "I will not believe this vile letter. Armand to deceive me thus--it is impossible."

And yet, was it impossible?

She remembered Odylle's hints; his own changed conduct--his indifference to herself. Was there, after all--some one?

She cried out in horror at the thought. It stabbed her to the core of that loving, faithful heart of hers. She threw herself on the bed in a stupor of misery, | | 192 with which she had not strength to wrestle. The time passed on. She gave it no heed. When her maid came to dress her for dinner she bade her go away--she was not well--she should not go downstairs that night. Victor Lamboi was coming, she knew--well, he and her husband could dine tête-à-tête. Face them with this horrible revelation and dread upon her soul, she could not.

Later on her husband sent her a message by her maid. "He was sorry to hear of her indisposition. Would she be well enough to go to the ball given by Marshal X--- to-night?"

She answered the woman almost angrily. She would go nowhere; and, wondering a little at the irritability of her usually gentle mistress, the maid retired again.

Slowly, wearily the hours passed. Adrienne had ordered her attendant not to come until she rang, and the woman was nothing loath to obey the command. It wanted half-an-hour to midnight when Adrienne roused herself from the stupor that had held her so long. She almost staggered as she walked to her dressing-room. She felt weak and faint, and her face was white as death. She hastily threw aside her robe de chambre and put on a dark travelling dress and bonnet. Then she extinguished the light, and glided softly down the stairs. It seemed strange to be leaving her own house like a thief; but she thought of nothing now save only to satisfy herself as to the truth of this hateful | | 193 letter. She left by a side door that led into the courtyard. There was no one about. The servants were entertaining some guests of their own, and deemed her safe in her chamber. Once out in the cold fresh air, she breathed more freely. She still held the letter in her hand. She had almost forgotten the address. She glanced at it, and then hailed a passing cab, and bade the man drive her to the street she mentioned.

It was after twelve when she reached it, and, dismissing the cab with a fare that astonished the driver, she walked slowly up the street. She was quite calm and composed now. Of the strangeness of her errand, the risk she ran, the extraordinary nature of the whole affair, she never even thought. She could not even give way to the self-abandonment of grief. Her heart seemed like a hell of anguish, doubt, dread, disgust. She only knew she went to the gladness of relief or the terrible shame of certainty.

She reached the house; lights were glittering through the windows, flowers filled the balconies and scented the night with faint and subtle fragrance. A moment she paused, then knocked. The door was opened instantly. She entered. There was no question asked. An elderly woman stepped forward and whispered something. Adrienne bowed her head. She felt as if she were stifling, and when the woman bade her follow, the whole corridors and stairs seemed whirling round her.

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She had no clear memory then, or at any time afterward, of what followed her entrance, till suddenly a familiar voice broke on her ears followed by a peal of rippling laughter. Then she looked through the curtains before her, and saw a dainty supper room, all laid out with flowers and silver and crystal, but only laid out for two. A voice beside her whispered:

"If madame will but look through the other door she will see the guests."

A hand seemed to lead her across the room. The curtains fell behind her. There was the faint sound of an opening door, and she saw before her husband and a woman, young, beautiful, exquisitely dressed. She was perched on the arm of his chair, and laughing down at him as he sat there. His arm was round her waist; his lips were pressed to the little white hand he held.

Adrienne staggered back; the door fell to. White and senseless she dropped to the ground, as a startled cry showed she was discovered.

When she recovered consciousness her husband was bending over her; her brow was wet, her dress unloosened. She lay on a couch in the room where she had seen him with his companion. Her shuddering eyes opened on the familiar sight, and the shock and horror of that scene came back to her.

She sprang to her feet and faced him, but her | | 195 agitation was too great for words; she trembled from head to foot.

His face was dark with anger; an oath hissed through his lips.

"What brought you here?" he said. "How dare you dog me--watch me? How dare you, I say?"

His voice brought back some strength of pride. She pressed her hands against her heart; its wild beats almost suffocated her. She took the letter from her breast and handed it to him. He read it, and a hot flush crept up to his brow. Then he tore it to atoms and put his heel on its fragments, and ground them into the carpet in his fury.

"I thought you were too proud to play the part of spy," he said curtly. "Well, now that you have discovered the truth of this communication, I suppose that you are satisfied. What do you intend to do?"

Her heart ceased its wild throbs. A great and deadly calm stole over her.

"Do!" she said, and her grand eyes looked at him till he quailed and shrank before their unutterable scorn. "What is there for me to do? What does any wife do who finds her love, her fidelity, her trust all shattered at her feet? God forgive me that I ever believed in you, Armand de Valtour; bitterly have I paid for that faith."

She moved away, but he followed her to the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked, and seized her roughly by the arm.

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She shuddered at his touch.

"Anywhere so that the degradation of this roof does not cover me!" she said.

"Corps du diable!" muttered Armand de Valtour savagely. "You have but yourself to blame for your degradation. Why did you seek it out? After all, I have done nothing very wrong; the letter lied to you in one respect."

Adrienne turned coldly away.

"It is not for me to measure the height and depth of your offending," she said. "Your notion of wrong and mine are somewhat different, I fancy. It is not the mere question of how far your guilt has gone that concerns me now. It is that the man I loved, the husband I trusted, exists no longer!"

He drew back. A momentary sense of all he had forfeited came over him.

In an instant she had passed out of the door and out of his sight. He stood looking after her wistfully, and the colour swept over his face like a hot flame.

"Good God! what a brute I am!" he muttered. "She is right--the man she loved never existed."

Out into the lighted streets, where all the glitter and gaiety and brilliance of Paris life were about her and around her, Adrienne hurried on like a wild and hunted thing. A horror of herself, her life, was upon her. That night had been as the passage of years. The life that had been so sweet and glad a thing to | | 197 her a brief while before, now looked black and bitter and hateful. Almost she could have prayed for death. White as snow--her eyes dark and blind with pain, so she hurried on, heedless and careless of where she went.

Her husband had had no thought but that her own carriage or some hired vehicle must have brought her to the house and was awaiting her return. Callous as he was, he would never have allowed her to tread the streets of Paris alone, and at night. But she had neither thought nor fear of anything. Men turned and looked at her in wonder; one or two spoke, but she never even heard them. Her ears were deaf to all voices save that one which had pronounced her shame, and given her this agony of suffering to bear.

A group of revellers, flushed with wine, reeled out of a street beside her. Some of them called after her, and one, bolder than the rest, laid his hand upon her arm. The touch roused her to some sense of where she was, and awakened her to the knowledge of her unprotected position. She flung off the hand, and faced the laughing, roystering group, pale, and fearless, and undaunted.

"Messieurs, I have lost my way. Can you direct me to the Rue Chaussée d'Antin?"

It was where Odylle lived. She had resolved to go to her. Return to her own house she would not after to-night.

A shout of laughter was her only answer, and a | | 198 volley of questions and badinage that made the blood boil in her veins. She shook herself free from the crowd, and attempted to pass on. At the same moment a figure turned the corner of the street close by, and, seeing a woman persecuted by a group of half-tipsy youths, he advanced swiftly toward her.

The lamplight fell on her pale face--the dark, frightened eyes. With one bound he was at her side.

"Madame de Valtour--you here!"

With a faint glad cry she clung to him.

"Oh, André--it is you--I am so glad! Send these men away, and take me home."

No need to send the cowards away. They moved off rapidly enough when once their victim had found a protector. André placed her hand within his arm; she trembled so that she could scarcely stand.

"Shall I find you a cab, madame?" he asked timidly.

His voice seemed to recall her scattered senses. She bent her head.

"Yes; I wish to go to the Marquise de Savigny."

He asked no questions. The joy and wonder of seeing her there was enough for him. The delight of being of any use--of any service--was all he cared to think of now.

"I dare not leave you. Are you strong enough to walk a little distance?" he asked her.

She bowed her head, and moved along by his side, | | 199 leaning heavily on the strong young arm that was so proud to support her. André wondered what had happened to her. She looked like a woman blind and dazed with a great shock. But she offered him no explanation, and he dared ask for none. The street was a quiet one and dimly lighted, and there was no sign of a cab anywhere. Presently the silence grew unendurable. André broke it.

"I have longed to see you--so often," he said falteringly. "I owe you so much. You have heard, doubtless, that I leave Paris--France--for three years' study in Milan?"

"Yes, I have heard," she said, rousing herself with an effort. "I am glad. Your success will always be pleasant to me. One day you will be great, I doubt not."

"I go down to Valtours to-morrow," he said slowly. "I must see my father before I leave. He has been very hard on me, but I hope he will forgive me at last."

"To Valtours!" Adrienne started. "I go to Valtours also," she said. "I am leaving Paris. I--it does not agree with me."

His heart gave a great throb. For an instant the surprise and delight of her words held him dumb. The tenderness, the chivalry, the adoration of his romantic regard for the young Countess made him weak and speechless at the mere thought of her presence. But what had happened? what had caused this sudden determination on her part? Had she | | 200 heard anything--discovered anything about Armand de Valtour?

He looked at her, but her eyes were gazing far away. She seemed to have forgotten his presence again. She looked weak and weary, as from long combat with pain, and he said to himself sorrowfully, "She knows--she will break her heart; and he so worthless!"

"There is a cab at last," he said; and she started as one in a dream, and let him place her within, and even gave him her hand in farewell; but all the time she knew nothing of what was said or done, and the dull aching pain at her heart never ceased for a second's space.

He stood and looked after her, and his face grew pale; his hands clenched themselves involuntarily.

"The brute!" he muttered half aloud. "Oh, God, if only I might avenge her wrongs!"