"And does the present, then, offer me so much happiness happiness that I should sit down contented with it? Can I rely upon your prolonged residence in France, or, at all events, on your speedy return?"

"I have often told you, madame, that I may be at any moment compelled to return to Hungary, and that nothing can be more uncertain than my future movements. If you cannot reconcile yourself to this state of things it would have been better for you and for me, me, that should never have left Vienna."

I

"But how is it possible that, married in France, you should persist in remaining in the Austrian service? What do you intend to do with your wife?

"Why, really, my dear mother, I think that you ought to be the person to answer that question, seeing that it is yourself who insisted on providing me with what

I assured you was a very troublesome, or rather a very useless, appendage to my mode of life. I told you a hundred times that it was the greatest folly in the world to force a wife upon me. You will one day be obliged to acknowledge it. I shall be as little of a married man as well can be."

"Are you really so heartless as deliberately to announce to me such an intention?" the marquise indignantly ex

claimed.

"It is the truth, madame, and there would be no use in trying to conceal it. M. de Biron is, I assure you, perfectly satisfied with our present arrangements. He would very much regret that his sonin-law gave up a career that holds out far better prospects than any other in France or elsewhere. Judithe, too, I am convinced, never dreamed of such a thing. You alone, madame, could have thought

of such an absurd and ruinous piece of

folly."

"Aye, that is like them all," the marquise bitterly ejaculated. "Titles, money, promotion! they think of; they live for nothing else. Fortune is their god. They worship no other deity!"

"Is it the first time that you have discovered this, madame? You must know more of the world, I should imagine, than to feel astonished at the fact. My bride, young as she is, would scarcely betray such simplicity."

"That girl is a hypocrite! She deceived me completely by her affected goodness. She is as worldly as the rest of them, and very artful besides."

"Oh, pray, my dear mother, do not be so unjust. She is, on the contrary, a very excellent and charming person, and I only wish that a happier fate was in store for her."

"But you are not, you never will be, in love with her?"

"I do not wish to make any rash assertions, but I certainly do not think it very likely that I should fall in love with my

own wife."

The marquise rose abruptly from her couch, and walked up and down the room with precipitate steps, now and then giving utterance to broken sentences, the sense of which M. de Bonneval found it difficult to catch.

"I lose him by my own imprudence! my own perverse folly! The reed on which I leant has failed me. If she had only tried to please him, if she had only entered into my views, he might have been worked upon ere now.

to be beguiled by their

tions! What has been

Fool, that I was, interested suggesthe result? but

that he marries a portionless girl, without spirit or feeling, who, instead of inducing

him to remain in France, actually drives

His

him away. I see it all plainly at last. I have been miserably taken in. return might have been easily brought about without their boasted interference. Of what advantage, after all, is this marriage to him? What do I gain by it? There is but one thing to be done. It must at once be broken off. They will raise up a clamour, but we can set them at defiance. Dubois has the Regent's ear."

While this agitated soliloquy was going on, M. de Bonneval kept watching his mother's gestures and countenance in silent astonishment. Now and then he quietly entreated her to be calm; but his composure only served to increase her irritation. At last she suddenly stopped her hurried pacing up and down, clasped her hands together, fixed her eyes upon him, and said, in a hollow voice: