The morning broke clear and fair; a few light clouds indeed hung about the eastern sky, but only sufficient to catch the rays of the rising sun, and gather them together, in a more intense glow. But these were soon dispersed; and the sky beamed, within five minutes after the break of dawn, in clear and unclouded beauty. Those clouds, however, were still hanging over the verge of heaven, and not above half the disc of the orb of light showed itself above the horizon, when the Marquis de Chazeul, full dressed, left his own apartments, and hurried to those of his mother. As he went, the sound of a hunting horn was borne upon the wind to his ear; and pausing for a moment, with all that fierce, tenacious jealousy of the rights of the chase, which was entertained by the old feudal nobles of France; he muttered, "It must be a bold man, or well accompanied, to hunt so near the Château de Marzay. This must be seen to;" and striding on, he entered his mother's ante-room with very little respect for the half-completed toilet of her maids. The Marchioness was still in bed; but, according to the custom of the day, she made no scruple of admitting any one who came in that situation; and her son was speedily at her bed-side. "Well, Chazeul," she said, with a shrewd smile, "the thing is done, I find; but tell me all about it. You did not disturb her I suppose?" "No," answered Chazeul, "I found everything as still as death; and so I left it. I might have been tempted, indeed, to look in between the curtains, if I had had light enough to see my fair bride as she lay slumbering. I was afraid she might wake too." "No great matter if she had," replied Madame de Chazeul. "The priest was not in his chamber; and the girl Blanchette would have been discreet." "I don't know that," replied Chazeul. "You don't know what?" demanded the Marchioness. "I don't know that you are right in either the one or the other," answered her son; "for, as I went in, I certainly heard a noise in the next room, as if some one were locking the door, and there was a light, too, came through the key-hole. Then, as to Blanchette, she seemed to be seized with a sudden fit of perverseness. It cost me a full hour and a hundred lies, to persuade her to do as she was bid."