Maurice was on his way to Madeleine's. Not for years, not since the day when he breathed his love in the old ChÂteau de Gramont, had his heart throbbed with such rapturous pulsations as now; not since that hour had the world looked so paradisiacal,—life so full of enchantment to his eyes. As he reached her door and ascended the steps, his emotions were overpowering. A few moments more, and the heavenly dream would become a glorious, life-brightening reality, or would melt away, a delusive mirage in the desert of his existence, leaving his pathway a blanker wilderness than ever.

He was too much at home to require the ceremony of announcement, and sought Madeleine in her boudoir. She was not there. She was receiving visitors in the drawing-room. Maurice sat down to await her coming; but his impatience made him too restless for inaction, and he entered the salon.

Madeleine's guests were Madame de Fleury and Mrs. Gilmer,—an accidental and not very welcome encounter of the fashionable belligerents; though since Mrs. Gilmer had received the much-desired invitation to Madame de Fleury's ball, she had affected to lay down her arms, and Madame de Fleury pretended to do the same.

Madeleine was listening with patient courtesy to the meaningless nothings of the one lady, and the stereotyped insipidity of the other. Madame de Fleury was tortured by a desire to consult her hostess concerning a fancy ball-dress which at that moment filled her thoughts; but Madeleine's manner was so thoroughly that of an equal who entertained no doubts of her own position,—the vocation of "Mademoiselle Melanie" was so completely laid aside,—that Madame de Fleury, with all her tact and world-knowledge, could not plan any mode of introducing the fascinating subject of "chiffons."

The marchioness greeted Maurice with enthusiastic cordiality. It struck her, on seeing him, that she might broach the desired topic through his aid; and she said, with the most charmingly innocent air, as though the thought had just occurred to her,—

"Shall I see you, M. de Gramont, at the grand fancy ball which Madame Orlowski gives next week? I hear it will be the fÊte of the season."

"I have not the honor of Madame Orlowski's acquaintance," replied Maurice.

"What a pity! But I can easily procure you an invitation, and you will have time enough to arrange about a costume. I have not determined upon mine yet. I want something very original. I am quite puzzled what to decide upon. I am perfectly haunted with visions of dresses that float through my brain. I have imagined myself attired as nymphs, and heathen deities, and ladies of ancient courts, and heroines of books; but I cannot make a choice."

Madame de Fleury did not venture to look toward Madeleine, and the latter made no observation. Maurice rejoined,—

"My father's state of health forbids my availing myself of your amiable offer."

Madame de Fleury was slightly discomfited. It was difficult to keep up the subject which seemed to have dropped naturally; but for the sake of reviving it, and trying to draw some suggestion from the Queen of Taste, she even condescended to address her foe; and, turning to Mrs. Gilmer with a false smile, asked,—

"You are going, of course? Have you determined upon the character you mean to assume?"

Mrs. Gilmer was flattered by finding her attire a matter of acknowledged importance to her rival, and replied, with a simper,—

"Not altogether,—my costume is under discussion,—I shall decide presently."

A significant glance intimated that she meant shortly to proceed upstairs, to the exhibition-rooms of "Mademoiselle Melanie."

Madame de Fleury grew desperate, and was resolved not to be baffled in her attempt; she now launched into a dissertation upon different styles of fancy dresses. Madeleine turned to Maurice to make inquiries about his father. Poor Maurice! as he noted the unruffled composure of her bearing, the quietude of her tone, the frank ease with which she addressed him, his hopes began to die away, and tormenting spirits whispered that Ronald's mother had certainly come to an erroneous conclusion.

Madame de Fleury, finding that her little artifices were thrown away upon Madeleine, took her leave; Mrs. Gilmer lingered for a few moments, then also made her exit, closely copying the graceful courtesy and floating, sweeping step of her rival.

"Thank Heaven! they are gone!" exclaimed Maurice. "I have so much to say to you, Madeleine, every moment they staid appeared to me an hour."

He could proceed no further, for the door opened, and Ruth Thornton entered with sketches of costumes in her hand, and said, hesitatingly,—

"I am sure you will pardon me, Mademoiselle Madeleine; Madame de Fleury insisted; she fairly, or rather unfairly forced me to seek you with these sketches; she seems resolved to secure your advice about her costume."

Madeleine knew how to rebuke impertinence in spite of her natural gentleness, and the very mildness of her manner made the reproof more severe. She had thoroughly comprehended Madame de Fleury's tactics, and had determined to make her understand that when she visited Mademoiselle de Gramont, the visit was paid to an equal, not to the mantua-maker upon whose time the public had a claim.

"Say to Madame de Fleury that I leave all affairs of this nature in your hands, and that I have perfect reliance on your good taste."

Ruth withdrew.

"Let us go to your boudoir, Madeleine," said Maurice.

Madeleine, as she complied, remarked,—

"You are troubled to-day, Maurice; two bright spots are burning upon your cheeks; you look excited; what has happened?"

"Much or little, as it may prove," replied Maurice, taking a seat beside her. "In the first place, my grandmother has concluded to leave Washington in a week, and, after she reaches New York, take the first steamer to Havre."

Maurice had given this intelligence so suddenly that Madeleine was off her guard, and the rapid varying of her color, the heaving breast, the look of anguish, the broken voice in which she exclaimed, "So soon? so very soon?" rekindled his expiring hopes.

"This has been but a brief meeting, Madeleine, after the separation of those long, sorrowful years. The future is all uncertain, I cannot fix a time, after I have said adieu, when I may clasp this dear hand again."

"But," faltered Madeleine, "your profession,—you will not abandon that? You will return to Charleston?"

"It is my earnest desire to do so."

"Then you will return! You will return soon?"

Maurice must have been the dullest of lovers if he could not distinguish the intonation of joy in Madeleine's voice.

"If my own advancement is the only incentive to my return, circumstances may interfere; my father's health, for instance, the necessity of attending to his affairs, or other considerations."

Madeleine did not reply.

"Madeleine, I shall offend you, perhaps, for I am about to transgress. At all hazards, I must touch upon a subject which you have banished from our conversation."

For a moment Madeleine looked disturbed, but this warning enabled her to collect herself; she soon said, with composure,—

"Even if you do not spare me, Maurice, do not touch on any theme which must give pain to yourself."

"I have not yet quite decided," returned he, "how much pain it may cost me. I will only ask you to answer me a few questions. As I am a lawyer, cross-examination, you know, is my vocation, and you must indulge me. Nearly five years ago you declared that you had bestowed your heart irrevocably. You were very young then,—you had had few opportunities of seeing gentlemen; yet you have remained constant to this mysterious lover? You have never repented that you loved him?"

"Never!" answered Madeleine, with fervor.

"And you believe that he loves you?"

Madeleine bowed her head.

"And you have loved him long? Perhaps you loved him early in your girlhood; perhaps you loved him from the time you first met?"

Madeleine bowed her head again.

"Even as he did you?"

"I do not know," she answered, in a low voice.

"That is strange; men are apt to boast of the length as well as of the strength of their passion," remarked Maurice. "Your lover must be an exception. But perhaps he is unaware that he is blest by your love?"

Without suspicion Madeleine fell into that snare, well-laid by the young lawyer, for she answered, thinking that it would calm the jealous pangs to which Maurice might be subjected,—

"You are right; he is not aware that I love him."

Had her eyes not been downcast, had she looked up for an instant into the face of Maurice, she would have known by its look of radiant ecstasy that she had betrayed herself.

In a tone which emotion rendered unsteady, he went on,—

"You would cast your lot with his, Madeleine? If he were poor, you would share his poverty? You would even abandon your dream of earning a fortune for yourself,—and I know how dear that dream is to your heart,—for his sake? You would do this were there no barrier to the avowal of your love,—no barrier to your union with him?"

"I would."

"And that barrier is the opposition of his proud relatives?" asserted Maurice.

Madeleine started, looked in his face in alarm; for the first time, the suspicion that he had divined her secret, flashed upon her.

But Maurice went on unpityingly,—

"You refused him your hand because you thought it base ingratitude to those relatives who had sheltered you in your orphan and unprotected condition, and who had other, as they supposed, higher views for him. You feared by letting him know that you loved him to injure his future prospects, and you nearly blighted that future by the despair you caused him when he lost you. And since you have been restored, at least to his sight, you have with a martyr's heroism adhered to your plan of self-sacrifice because you thought that to relinquish it would draw down upon him and yourself the wrath of his haughty grandmother,—I will not say of his father; because, too, you believed that you would be accused of ingratitude. And you have allowed him to suffer unimaginable torture rather than acknowledge that the lover to whom you have been so true,—the lover for whom you have sacrificed yourself,—the lover most unworthy of you (save through that love which renders the humblest worthy),—is the man you rejected in the ChÂteau de Gramont at the risk of breaking his heart."

Madeleine dropped her face upon her hands with a low sob, but Maurice drew the hands away, and folding his arms about her said, fervently,—

"Madeleine, my own, my best beloved, it is too late for concealment now! I know whom you love,—it is too late for denial. Look at me and tell me once,—tell me only once that it is true you do love me; tell me this, and it will repay me for all I have suffered."

But Madeleine did not yield to his prayer; she tried to extricate herself from his arms, but they clasped her too tightly; and when she could speak she said, through her tears,—

"You ensnared me,—you entrapped me to this! I should never have told you! And what does it avail,—I can never be your wife."

"It avails beyond all calculation to know that you love me, even if, as you say, you cannot be my wife. Madeleine, to know that you love no other,—that you love me,—that I have a claim upon you which I may not be able to urge until we meet in heaven,—is heaven on earth!"

What could Madeleine reply?

"But why, Madeleine, can you not become mine? My father would no longer object. Are you not sure of that? Do you not see how he clings to you? And my grandmother"—

"It would kill her," broke in Madeleine, "to see you the husband of one whom she detests and looks down upon as a degraded outcast. The Duke de Gramont's daughter only feels her pride in this, that she could never enter a family to which she was not welcome."

"Then her pride is stronger than her love! No, Madeleine, though your firmness has been tested and I dread it, I will not believe that you will continue so cruel as to refuse me your hand."

"Did you not say that it was happiness enough to know that,—that,"—

Madeleine had stumbled upon a sentence which it was not particularly easy to finish.

"To know that you love me! that you love me! Let me repeat the words over and over again, until my unaccustomed ears believe the sound; for they are yet incredulous! But, Madeleine, you who are truth itself, how could you have said that you loved another, even from the best of motives?"

"I did not. I said that my affections were already engaged: yet I meant you to believe, as you did, that I loved another; and the thought of the deception, for it was deception, has caused me ceaseless contrition. I do not reconcile it to my conscience; I spoke the words impulsively as the only means of forcing you to give up all claim to my hand; but I do not defend those words."

"And I do not forgive them! You can only win my pardon by promising me that you will openly contradict them, and atone for your error by becoming my wife."

Madeleine's agitated features composed themselves to a look of determination which made Maurice tremble with apprehension; and he had cause, for she said,—

"I cannot, Maurice,—I cannot,—must not,—will not be your wife without the consent of your father and your grandmother!"

"But if it be impossible to obtain my grandmother's?"

"Then you must prove to me that you spoke truth by being content with that knowledge which you declared would satisfy you."

Maurice remonstrated, argued, prayed, but he did not shake Madeleine's resolve. Believing she was right, she was as inflexible as the Countess de Gramont herself.