"Le perfide!" was the smothered ejaculation of his fair friend on receiving this gratifying intelligence from her dejected parents, thus compelled to relinquish their last feeble hope of seeing their darling united to the husband of their choice. To the darling herself the new return of Walter became suddenly an object of tender interest. Nothing could be so natural as her immediate anxiety to express this impatience in a reply to his last letter, and nothing could be more natural than that she should fall into a paroxysm of nervous irritation at the frustration of this amiable design, by the daring desertion of her chargé-d'affaires. But she was too proud to send for her, or to her: it would look like acknowledgment of error. She would "die first," and "the little impertinent would return of her own accord, humble enough, no doubt, and she _should_ be humbled." But for the next two days nothing was heard or seen of "the little impertinent" at the Chateau de St Hilaire. On the third, still no sign of her repentance, by reappearance, word, or token. On the fourth, Adrienne's resolution could hold out against her necessities no longer, and she was on the point of going herself in quest of the guilty Madelaine, when she learned the astounding tidings that Walter had been five days returned to Caen, and on that very morning when the news first reached her,---- But Walter's proceedings must be briefly related more veraciously than by the blundering tongue of common rumour, which reported them to Adrienne. He had returned to Caen, and to the hospitable home of his English friends, to whose ear, of course, he confided his tale of disappointed hopes. But, as it should seem by the mirthful bearing of the small party assembled that night round the supper-table after his affecting disclosure, not only had it failed in exciting sympathy for the abused lover, but he himself, by some unaccountable caprice, was, to all appearance, the happiest of the social group. Grave matters, as well as trivial, were, however, debated that night round the supper-table of the English party; and of the four assembled, as neither had attained the coolness and experience of twenty-six complete summers, and two of the four (the married pair) had forfeited all pretensions to worldly wisdom by a romantic love-match, it is not much to be wondered at that Prudence was scarcely admitted to a share in the consultation, and that she was unanimously outvoted in conclusion. The cabinet council sat till past midnight, yet Walter Barnard was awake next morning, and "stirring with the lark," and brushing the dew-drops from the wild-brier sprays, as he bounded by them through the fields, on his way to----_not_ St Hilaire.