This, then, had happened. Milord and Miss Lucie were become inseparable lovers, and desirous of the plighted troth. But Madame Gondran she would not hear of it. She was all engaged herself to the seductiveness of the Gouverneur, and--for the chief reason that the young lady feared and disliked him in the exact opposite proportion--was determined to sanction him for her nominee to the covetable hand of Miss. He, this Mr Delane, was, of a surety, very pleasing and attentive with her, and the young man, his pupil, not at all; but, like a boy, arrogant and inconsiderate. Milord, no doubt, lacked the experience to know that the diplomacy of wooing is to propitiate the guardian before the ward. It is well, also, to warm a woman’s vanity, if you would see her melt to you. So things went on; until presently a soft gossip began to make itself heard, with turnings of the head, and nudgings, and a pointing of the finger. There were whispers of a fondness betrayed, and of love beginning to reveal in itself the penalty of rashness. One was wondering how the truth could still hide itself from the eyes of the terrible invalid, when suddenly a startling calamity befell: Milord disappeared, and was never heard of again. Now I quote what follows from the testimony of the Hospice walls, which were alway as full of ears and eyes as a honeycomb. It deals with the period before investigation had established the pretty moral certitude that Milord had met with some fatal accident on the mountains, and when he was still supposed, in the popular view, to have slipped away merely from the consequences of an intrigue. The young Madame, it appeared, quite incredulous at the outset, was driven presently, by her Aunt and the Gouverneur, into the conviction that she had been ruined and deserted by a scoundrel. In the first of her desperation, indeed, eager to vindicate both herself and her lover, she declared that they were husband and wife--that, in short, on a certain remembered day, when they had all joined in an expedition to Aosta, he and she had eluded the others for a time, and, by prearrangement, had been married before some civil functionary, who had afterwards certified to the fact in a document, preserved, she believed, by Mr Skene.