When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb and finger, and shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note again, and sprang quickly towards him; then she stopped short, there was a conflict between longing for the sweet morsel and instinctive fear of him; she looked at the sugar, turned her head away, and looked again like an unfortunate dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his master slowly recites the greater part of the alphabet until he reaches the letter that gives permission. At length the animal appetite conquered fear; Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched her lover’s fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and vanished with it into a thicket. This painful scene was too much for the colonel; he burst into tears, and took refuge in the drawing-room. “Then has love less courage than affection?” M. Fanjat asked him. “I have hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor niece was once in a far more pitiable state than at present.” “Is it possible?” cried Philip. “She would not wear clothes,” answered the doctor. The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the doctor’s mind this pallor was an unhealthy symptom; he went over to him and felt his pulse. M. de Sucy was in a high fever; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in putting the patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain repose and sleep. The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant struggle with a deadly anguish, and before long he had no tears left to shed. He was often well-nigh heartbroken; he could not grow accustomed to the sight of the Countess’ madness; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in this cruel position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie’s wild shyness by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all his thoughts to this, bringing these dainties, and following up the little victories that he set himself to gain over Stephanie’s instincts (the last gleam of intelligence in her), until he succeeded to some extent--she grew _tamer_ than ever before. Every morning the colonel went into the park; and if, after a long search for the Countess, he could not discover the tree in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook where she lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof where she had perched herself, he would whistle the well-known air _Partant pour la Syrie_, which recalled old memories of their love, and Stephanie would run towards him lightly as a fawn. She saw the colonel so often that she was no longer afraid of him; before very long she would sit on his knee with her thin, lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat as lovers love to do, Philip doled out sweetmeats one by one to the eager Countess. When they were all finished, the fancy often took Stephanie to search through her lover’s pockets with a monkey’s quick instinctive dexterity,