'"It does indeed; but I dare not think of such a thing--till--till next week," I replied, coyly. '"Lisette," said he, "were you ever at the village of Elewyt, where the old château of Rubens stands, between Malines and Vilvorde? It is a lovely place, and wild as lovely; not a soul would see us there. Come with me, darling, and let us spend one happy day together." '"I dare not--I dare not," as a vision of Madame Hoboken, grim, prim, and full of proprieties, oppressed me, though I was secretly overwhelmed with delight at the suggestion of this stolen and, to me, new kind of pleasure--a whole beautiful summer afternoon to be spent hand in hand with Lucien--hand in hand, as we were wont to be when children in the Place Verte or on the Boulevards. '"Come with me, sweet one," he whispered, "it will never--can never be known. It is less than an hour by railway, and, amid the bosky thickets and gardens of the old château we shall seem to leave the world behind us." 'So strong was the temptation to spend an untrammelled afternoon with my betrothed--he who within a week was to be my husband--that I yielded. I knew that I ran a dreadful risk in being seen alone with him, for Antwerp is one of the most scandalous and gossipy towns in Belgium. In this country the rules are very strict as regards the daily intercourse of ladies and gentlemen, in the mere matters of meeting or conversing, as compared with you in England, where the perfect freedom of the innocent is so great; and hence, I doubt not, your happier marriages; for in Belgium, as in France, we are forced to espouse those to whose inner lives we are strangers, and to whose hearts, before marriage, we can have no key, if it is ever found at all. 'A voiture took us to the train, and we took seats in separate carriages. Already the simple, child-like expedition had an air of guilt, and a tremulous fear possessed me as the train glided out of the station, through a cutting in the fortifications at the Rue du Rempart--the wet fosse was left behind, and we sped through the open country.