"How well I understand that!" he answered, with the quick and tender glance of a lover who is delighted to find his own ways of feeling in the woman he loves. "I am so much like you in that; the presence of a person whom I know to be despicable gives me a physical oppression of the heart. The other evening at your house, when I met that Navagero of whom Corancez had so often spoken, he poisoned my visit, although I had with me that dear, dear letter which you had written the night before." Then, dreamily following this train of thought, he continued: "It is strange that every one does not feel the same about this. To some people, and excellent ones too, a proof of human infamy is almost a joy. I have a friend like that--Olivier du Prat, of whom I spoke to you and whom you knew at Rome. I have never seen him so gay as when he had proved some villainy. How he has made me suffer by that trait of his! And he was one of the most delicate of men, with the tenderest of hearts and finest of minds. Can you explain that?" The name of Olivier du Prat, pronounced by that voice which had been moving Ely to the heart--what an answer to the wish sighed by the amorous woman that this divine moment should not be spoiled! These simple words were enough to dissipate her enchantment, and to interrupt her happiness with a pain so acute that she almost cried aloud. Alas! she was but at the very beginning of her love's romance, and already that which had been predicted by Louise Brion, her faithful and too lucid friend, had come true--she was shut in the strange and agonizing inferno of silence which must avoid, as the most terrible of dangers, the solace of confession. How many times already in like moments had a similar allusion evoked between her and Pierre the image of that other lover! Pierre had very soon alluded lightly and gayly to his friend, and as the Baroness had thought it best not to conceal the fact that she had met him in Rome, he continued to recall memories of Du Prat, without suspecting that his words entered like a knife into the poor woman's heart. To see how much Hautefeuille loved Du Prat--with a friendship equal to that which the latter had for him--how could she help feeling anew the constant menace hanging over her? And then, as at the present, she was filled with an inexpressible anguish. It was as though all the blood in her veins had suddenly flowed out through some deep and invisible wound. At other times it was not even necessary that the redoubtable name should be mentioned in their conversation. It sufficed that the young man, in the course of the intimate talks which she encouraged as often as her social servitude permitted, should ingenuously express his opinion on some of the love-affairs reported by the gossips of the coast. She would then insist upon his talking in order to measure his uncompromising morality. She would have been pained if he had felt differently, for then he would not have been that noble