Fernande kept back, with difficulty, an exclamation of horror. More schemes! more intrigues! more tortuous by-paths! Was the whole of her young life to be linked indissolubly to this endless chain of treachery? Was she to be passively acquiescent--a tool, where need be--whenever plots were hatched that revolted her every sense of loyalty and of truth? Fortunately for her, Madame was too deeply engrossed in her own calculations to pay much attention to her, and after a while she--Fernande--was able to escape out of the boudoir where the atmosphere had already become stifling. With aching heart she bade a final adieu to Laurent--the companion of her childhood, the man for whom she had such a tender affection and whom she had never loved, but also the man to whom she would have remained rigidly true, despite all that he would have made her suffer. Then she went out into the park. Yet another year of neglect had gone over the terraces and the walks. It looked perhaps a shade more tangled, a shade more forlorn. The heavy rain of the night before had broken down the slender, unpruned twigs of the roses, and the paths were littered with young branches torn from the parent trees. The scent of wet earth mingled with the fragrance of heliotrope and white acacia; there was a riot of bird-song in the old chestnuts and a hum of bees in the avenue of limes. Fernande instinctively had wandered to the postern gate which gave on the apple-orchard. It was ajar, and she pushed it open and wandered out on the wet grass and under the apple-trees, already weighted down by the wealth of young fruit. From the village distant a kilometre or so from the park gates there came the sound of a clock striking seven. The air was redolent with the scent and savour of an early summer's morning. Fernande breathed it in with delight. The wet leaves of the apple-trees sent down an occasional shower of raindrops over her hair as she passed, and now and then she stooped to pick a sprig of brilliant-hued wild sorrel or a clump of snow-white marguerites. How lovely was the world! Why should men and women plot and scheme to make it hideous with their own passions and their manifold treacheries?