"In the mean time," continued Clémence, "in the mean time I had also become sadly spoilt. I had grown capricious, and vain, and haughty, by indulging such feelings for several years, in pursuit of my own system; and when the Count appeared at Poitiers, I do not know that I was inclined to treat him well. Not that I would ever have behaved to him as I did to others; but I scarcely knew how to behave better. I believed myself privileged to say and do any thing I thought right, to exact any thing, nay, to command any thing. I was surprised when I found he took no notice of me; I was mortified perhaps; I determined, if ever I made him happy at last, to punish him for his first indifference,--to punish him, how think you? To make him love me, to make him doubtful of whether I loved him, and to make him figure in the train of those whom I myself despised. But, oh, Maria, I soon found that I could not accomplish what I sought. There was a power, a command in his nature that overawed, that commanded me. Instead of teaching him to love me, and making him learn to doubt that I loved him, I soon found that it was I that loved, and learned to doubt that he loved me. Then came restlessness and disquietude. From time to time I saw--I felt that he loved me, and then again I doubted, and strove to make him show it more clearly, by the very means best calculated to make him crush it altogether. I affected to listen to the frivolous and the vain, to smile upon the beings I despised, to assume indifference towards the only one I loved. Thus it went on till the last day of his stay, when he refused to accompany us on our hunting party, but left me with a promise to join us if he could. I was disappointed, mortified. I doubted if he would keep his promise. I doubted whether he had any inclination to do so, and I strove to forget, in the excitement of the chase, the bitterness of that which I suffered. Suddenly, however, I caught a glance of him riding down towards us. He came up to my side, he rode on by me, he attended to me, he spoke to me alone; there was a grace, and a dignity, and a glory about his person that was new and strange; he seemed as if some new inspiration had come upon him. On every subject that we spoke of he poured forth his soul in words of fire. His eyes and his countenance beamed with living light, such as I had never before beheld; every thing vanished from my eyes and thoughts but him; every thing seemed small and insignificant and to bow before him; the very fiery charger that he rode seemed to obey, with scarcely a sign or indication of his will. The cavaliers around looked but like his attendants, and I--I Maria--proud, and haughty, and vain as I had encouraged myself to be--I felt that I was in the presence of my master, and that, there, beside me, was the only man on earth that I could willingly and implicitly obey--I felt subdued, but not depressed--I felt, perhaps, as a woman ought to feel towards a man she