his love was full of haughty pride, selfishness and hatred. But I said to myself, if it had been he, he would have followed me and looked in our carriage--I would have seen him in the church, or on the portico outside.... Besides, why should he have come?... he had given up seeing me; he could easily have found me had he so desired; he knew where Madame Taverneau's house was in Paris, and he knew that I lived with her; if he had hoped to be received by me, he would have simply called to pay a visit.... Finally, if he was at this early hour--six in the morning--in the church, at so great a distance from where I live, it was not to act as a spy upon me. The man who called Louise was not Edgar--it could not have been Edgar. This reflection reassured me. I questioned Raymond; he had seen no one, heard no one. I remembered that M. de Meilhan was not in Paris, and tried to convince myself that it was foolish to think of him any more. But yesterday I learned in a letter from Madame Taverneau--who as yet knows nothing of my marriage or departure from Paris, and will not know, until a year has elapsed, of the fortune I have settled upon her--I learned that M. de Meilhan left Havre and came direct to Paris. His mother did not tell him that I had gone with her to bring him home. When she found that her own influence was sufficient to detain him in France, she was silent as to my share in the journey. I thank her for it, as I greatly prefer he should remain ignorant of the foolish idea I had of sacrificing myself at his shrine in order to make his mother happy. But what alarms me is that she keeps him in Paris because she knows that he will learn the truth at Richeport, and because she hopes that the gayeties around him will more quickly make him forget this love that so interfered with her ambitious projects. So Edgar _was_ in Paris the day of my wedding ... and perhaps ... but no, who could have told him anything? I lived three miles from the parish where I was married.... It could not have been he ... and yet I fear that man.... I remember with what bitterness and spite he spoke to me of Raymond, in a letter, filled with unjust reproaches, that he wrote me three days after my departure from Richeport. In this letter, which I immediately burned, he told me that M. de Villiers was engaged to be married to his cousin. O how wretched this information made me! It had been broken off years ago, but M. de Villiers thought the engagement still existed; he spoke of it as a tie that would prevent his friend from indulging in any pretensions to my favor; and yet what malevolence there was in his praise of him, what jealous fear in his insolent security! How ingenuously he said: "Since I have no cause to fear him, why do I hate him?" I now remember this hatred, and it frightens me. Aided by Roger he will soon know all; he will discover that Irene de Chateaudun and Louise Guérin are the same person, and then two furious