From that moment Mme. de Roselis (for she, of course, it was) lost the tranquil ease and proud indifference she had flattered herself she would be able to preserve. She now measured the gravity and danger of her act by the severity with which the women had judged it, while the light comments of the men revealed to her the magnitude of the debt she owed to Léon's rare delicacy of conduct. This consideration increased her regard for him. By degrees the idea that she had injured a man who worshiped her and whom she could not help liking, the peril and glory that hung around him lending him the glamour that women love, and, finally, the element of anxiety about him,--the food on which both love and memory thrive,--all these things helped to waken in her heart a feeling that was new to her. She was seized with a longing to see her daughter again, and regain her solitude, and her one thought was to get away as quickly as possible. While paying her farewell visit to Mme. de B. she heard that General X. and his pleasant young aide-de-camp were on their way to Spain, where hostilities had already begun. Her heart smote her. She cut her call short; an almost painful restlessness impelled her homewards to hasten the preparations for departure. What a difference there was between her present state of mind and that in which she had arrived at the beginning of the winter, when on Mme. de Gernancé's pressing invitation she had agreed to spend that season in Paris. Cheerful, contented, in the flower of her youth, looking forward to every kind of enjoyment, such was Mme. de Roselis then, and it may be imagined with what favor the beautiful and wealthy widow was received in a society where happiness constitutes a great merit. Mme. de B. was one of the first persons to whom Elinor was introduced. M. de Gernancé was an intimate friend of that lady's husband and when the first rumors of war had begun to circulate in the city the idea had struck Elinor to utilize this friendship to procure a better and less dangerous post for Léon. She had given M. de Gernancé to understand that the young man had been recommended to her by his family, and she only requested that her name might not be mentioned in the transaction. Her intervention was crowned with success, and then by a coincidence the meeting between the two had taken place and the whole course of her life was suddenly changed. Mme. de Roselis then wended her way back to Touraine, worried, anxious, vexed with herself for the folly that had brought about such unlooked for results. Her lively imagination painted as imminent all the most terrible disasters that could possibly befall, and her heart melted at the contemplation of misfortunes that she was inventing for herself. She left her black servant in Paris to collect and forward all the news that came in from Spain, for she was beginning to take a keen interest in the events that were passing there.