"What I am waiting for is to see how quickly your gravity and attentiveness will vanish when you hear the unexpected news I am about to tell you," said Madame de Pënâfiel, laughing. "No matter; don't interrupt me. I wanted to go this morning to see Mlle. Lenormand, not only about my birthday, but because I was curious to know if that wonderful mind-reader would be able to foretell the greatest happiness of my life, that I have ever dreamed of, was about to be realised. This is my dream: the first of May I quit Paris." "You are going away!" "Be silent," said Marguerite, putting her pretty finger on her lips; "see how excited you are already; what will it be by and by? I shall begin again: I am going away the first of May, taking no one with me but a confidential man servant, and my old _femme de chambre_, Mlle. de Vandeuil. The apparent object of my journey is a visit of some months to one of my country places in Lorraine that I have not seen for a long time." "I understand." "You do not understand at all. When I get six leagues away from Paris I halt; I leave my carriage with my maid's father, who is devotedly attached to me, and I return to Paris. Guess where?" "Truly, that is more than I can tell." "To a modest and pretty little villa in a far distant quarter, and there I am to install myself under the name of Madame Duval, a young widow, who has come from Brittany to Paris to attend to a lawsuit. Well, what did I tell you? You are even more astonished, more startled than I expected," said Marguerite. It was neither astonishment nor stupefaction that I felt, but something very different. Whether it was the irritated state of mind that I was in, or my natural distrust, I know not, but no sooner did I hear of this plan of hers than I suddenly remembered one of the scandalous stories that I heard about Madame de Pënâfiel, and the mysterious doings that they said had taken place in some little villa that she possessed. Marguerite had denied it, like so many other absurd falsehoods, which, not being able to produce any evidence, were reduced to inventing a thousand wonderful incidents. Lulled by the ideal happiness that I had been tasting for the last two months, this brief season of felicity and forgetfulness, I had put away from my mind all thoughts of the past. While near this charming woman, I had blindly believed that which is so convenient, so pleasant, and so wise to believe, that I was her only love. I had blindly believed the noble explanations she had given me for her conduct. I had even forgotten the cowardly and miserable suspicions that had made me so cruelly unjust towards her. Why, then, did I suddenly fall, on hearing of this project, into my former abominable state of distrust? I know not why, alas! But doubt took possession of my mind.