A more strict watch was kept in the night than in the day; and, what between one halt and another, the dawn was beginning to purple the eastern verge of the sky, when the Count arrived at the spot where his troops were quartered. As he was dismounting from his horse, however, some one whispered a word in his ear; and, springing again at once into the saddle, he turned his horse's head, and galloped on to his lodgings at St. Cloud. CHAPTER XVIII. While such was the conduct of the Count d'Aubin, St. Real, whom he had left hurt, agitated, and gloomy, continued to pace his little chamber, giving way to many a melancholy thought. The more he yielded to reflection, the more he examined the state of his own heart, the more deeply and bitterly he felt that the deceit he had practised upon himself did not date from a late period, but had been of long existence. He remembered the pleasure he had felt in the society of Eugenie de Menancourt from his earliest days, in the sweet reciprocation of simple and innocent feelings, in the mutual communication of thoughts and sensations peculiar to the retired state of life in which they then passed their days. He remembered how much pain he had felt when her father, taking part in the troubles of the time, had removed for a short period from his neighbourhood; and he remembered how gladly he had heard that the hand of Eugenie de Menancourt had been promised to his cousin the young Count d'Aubin, inasmuch as that engagement was destined to bring her back to the vicinity of his father's chateau. He had calculated, simply enough, upon always regarding her as a beloved sister; and as he never for a moment having dreamed of any other feeling towards her during his early days, the idea certainly never presented itself after he was informed of an arrangement which he was taught to look upon as a positive engagement towards his cousin. When she did return to Maine, he greeted her with what he fancied brotherly affection; and though when he beheld his cousin apparently neglecting her, to pay devoted attention to the gay and sparkling beauties of the royal court, he felt a degree of anger and indignation on Eugenie's account, which made him devote himself entirely to her, he would have considered those feelings--had he thought of the matter in such a light at all--as the surest proofs that his inmost sensations towards Eugenie de Menancourt were merely those of a relation, inasmuch as, instead of feeling jealous of the attentions his cousin paid her, he was angry that those attentions were not more. Now, however, he knew the whole--he saw that the love he had felt had been early conceived, and secretly nourished; and the insight that he gained into his own feelings showed him that those feelings could never change, but would last in all their intensity to cause his misery through life.