"Oh, I’m not so easily impressed. I am afraid you will have to wait a little before you get any praises from me. I don’t judge people’s actions leniently; there is generally more than one explanation of them. I grant that your behaviour towards Mlle. de Porhoët looks very well, but——" she paused, shook her head, and went on in a serious, bitter, and frankly insulting tone, "but I am not at all certain that you are not paying court to her in the hope that she may make you her heir." I felt myself grow pale. But, seeing how absurd it would be to answer this young girl angrily, I controlled myself, and replied grandly, "Allow me, mademoiselle, to express my sincere pity for you." She appeared very much surprised. "Your sincere pity?" "Yes, mademoiselle, the respectful pity to which I think you have a right." "Pity!" she said, stopping her horse and slowly turning her disdainful, half-closed eyes towards me. "I am not so fortunate as to understand you." "It is really quite simple, mademoiselle; if disillusion, doubt, and callousness are the bitterest fruits of long experience, nothing in the world deserves pity so much as a heart withered by mistrust before it has even seen life." "Sir," said Mlle. Laroque, with a strange vehemence, "you do not know what you are talking about. And," she added more harshly, "you forget to whom you are speaking!" "That is true, mademoiselle," I answered gently, bowing. "I may have spoken without much knowledge, and perhaps I forgot, to some extent, to whom I was speaking. But you set me the example." Her eyes fixed on the top of the trees that bordered the road, Mlle. Marguerite asked, with haughty irony: "Must I beg your pardon?" "Most certainly, mademoiselle," I replied firmly, "if either of us should ask pardon, it is you. You are rich, I am poor; you can humble yourself.... I cannot." There was silence. Her tightened lips, her quivering nostrils, and the sudden whiteness of her forehead, showed what a struggle was going on within her. Suddenly lowering her whip as if to salute, she said: "Very well, I beg your pardon." At the same moment she gave her horse a sharp cut and set off at a gallop, leaving me in the middle of the road. I have not seen her since. _July 30th_. The calculation of probabilities is never more misleading than when it has to do with the thoughts and feelings of a woman. After the painful scene between Mlle. Marguerite and myself, I had not been very anxious to encounter her. For two days I had not been to the château and I scarcely expected that the resentment I had aroused in this proud nature, would have subsided in this short interval. However, about seven o’clock on the morning of the day before yesterday, when I was working at the open window of my tower, I heard my name called out in a most friendly way by the very person of whom I thought I had made an enemy. "M. Odiot, are you there?"