Count Tristan was in the heat of argument with his haughty mother, when the door of the library opened, and Madeleine entered. One who had beheld the tempestuous burst of grief, the torrent of tears, the heart-rending despair that convulsed her frame but half an hour before, in the little chÂlet, would scarcely have recognized the countenance upon which the eyes of the Countess de Gramont and her son were now turned. Not the faintest shadow of that whirlwind of passionate anguish was left upon Madeleine's face, unless it might be traced in the great calm which succeeds a heavy storm; in the death-like pallor which overspread her almost rigid features; in the steady light that shone from her soul-revealing eyes; in the firm outline of her colorless lips; in the look of heroic resolve which imparted to her noble lineaments a higher beauty than they ever before had worn.

She approached Count Tristan with an unfaltering step, holding a letter in her hand. That letter had given a sudden check to her vehement sorrow, and restored her equilibrium.

"I have received this communication from Count Damoreau."

As she spoke, she extended the epistle to the count, who for one instant quailed before her clairvoyant eyes. It seemed as though a prophetic judgment spoke out of their shining depths.

He took the letter mechanically, without opening it. His gaze was riveted, as though by a magnetism too powerful for him to resist, upon her purposeful countenance.

Madeleine went on,—

"Count Damoreau tells me that you and my aunt desire to withdraw your protection from me; that you feel I have sufficiently long enjoyed the shelter of your roof; that you wish to provide me with some other asylum."

There was no hesitation in her voice as she uttered these words. She spoke in a tone rendered clear and quiet by the dignity of self-respect.

"Count Damoreau had no authority to write in such a strain to you," observed the countess, with asperity.

"There is his letter. He informed me that he has the Count Tristan's authority. To prove it, he encloses the letter yesterday delivered to him by M. Gaston de Bois."

Count Tristan was too thoroughly confounded to attempt any reply. He was painfully aware of the unmistakable character of that epistle.

"Count Damoreau announces to me," continued Madeleine, undisturbed, "that he is unable to comply with your request, and extend an invitation for me to join his family circle; and that my other relatives have also declined to accede to a solicitation of yours that they should by turns receive me as an inmate. He adds that his friend, Lady Vivian, is seeking an humble companion to accompany her to Scotland; and he trusts that I will thankfully accept this situation."

"It is an insult,—a deliberate insult to us and you!" broke forth the countess.

Madeleine's lips trembled with a half smile.

"I do not deem it an insult to myself: I am as thankful as Count Damoreau can desire me to be; but I decline his well-intentioned offer."

Count Tristan ground his teeth, and cast upon Madeleine a glance of fury and menacing detestation. Their eyes met, and she returned the look with an expression which simply declared she recognized what was passing in his mind.

"You did right to decline: I should never have permitted you to accept," remarked the countess, in a somewhat softer tone.

She deemed it politic to conciliate Madeleine for the present, fearing that she might be driven to take some humiliating step which would cast a reflection upon her kindred.

"I regret that my son has acted hastily. If you conduct yourself with the propriety which I have the right to demand, you will still find a home in the ChÂteau de Gramont, and in myself the mother I have ever been to you."

"Mother!" at that word Madeleine's glacial composure melted. "A mother!—oh, my aunt, thank you for that word! You do not know how much good it does me to hear it from your lips! But the ChÂteau de Gramont can never more be my home. That is settled: I came to tell you so."

"What do you mean?" asked the count, with a gleam of ill-disguised satisfaction.

"I mean that I purpose shortly to quit this mansion, never to return!"

"Then you do intend to accompany Lady Vivian to Scotland?" he inquired.

"You—my niece—a de Gramont—become the humble companion of Lady Vivian!" exclaimed the countess, in wrathful astonishment. "Can you even contemplate such an alternative?"

"No, madame," returned Madeleine, with an emphasis which might have been interpreted into a tone of pride. "I shall not become the humble companion of any lady."

"With whom do you expect to live?" demanded the count.

"I shall live alone."

"Live alone, at your age,—without fortune, without friends? It is impracticable,—impossible!" replied her aunt, decisively.

"I have reached my majority. I shall try to deserve friends. I have some small possession: the family diamonds of my mother still remain to me."

"But your noble name."

"Rest assured that it will never be disgraced by me!"

"I tell you that your project is impossible," maintained the countess, resolutely. "I forbid you to even attempt to put it into execution. I forbid you by the gratitude you owe me. I forbid you in the name of all the kindnesses I have lavished upon you!"

"And do you not see, my aunt, it is because I would still be grateful for these kindnesses that I would go hence? From the moment I learned I was a burden to you, that my presence here was unwelcome, this was no longer my home. If I leave you now, the memory of your goodness only, will dwell in my heart. If I were to remain longer, each day my presence would become more intolerable to you; each day your words and looks would grow colder and harsher; each day I should feel more degraded in my own eyes. You would spoil your own benefactions: I perhaps, might forget them, and be stained with the crime of ingratitude. No, let us now part,—now, while I may still dare to hope that you will think of me with tenderness and regret,—now, while I can yet cherish the recollection of the happy days I have passed beneath your roof. My resolution is taken: it is unalterable. I could not rest here. You will, perhaps, accord me a few days to make needful preparations; then I must bid you farewell."

She turned to quit the room, but encountered Maurice and Bertha, who had entered in time to hear the last sentence.

Bertha, on leaving her cousin, had sought Maurice and told him of Madeleine's prostrating sorrow. They hastened back to the chÂlet together, but she had disappeared. They were in search of her when they entered the library.

"Bid us farewell, Madeleine?" cried Bertha. "What do you mean? Where are you going? Surely you will never leave us?"

"I must."

"But my aunt will not let you; Cousin Tristan will not let you; Maurice will not let you. Speak to her, some of you, and say that she shall not go."

"Bertha," answered the count, "you do not know all the circumstances which have caused Madeleine to form this resolution; and, if my mother will pardon me for differing with her, I must say, frankly, that I approve of the course Madeleine has chosen. I honor her for it. I think she acts wisely in remaining here no longer!"

Then Maurice came forward boldly, and placing himself beside Madeleine, with an air of manly protection, spoke out,—

"And I agree with you, my father. I honor Madeleine for her resolution. I think she acts wisely in remaining here no longer."

"O Maurice, Maurice! how can you speak so? Don't let her go, unless you want to make me miserable!" pleaded Bertha.

Madeleine's hueless face was overspread with a brilliant glow as she cast upon Maurice one hasty look of gratitude.

"I speak what I mean. Madeleine cannot, without sacrificing her self-respect, accept hospitality which is not freely given,—protection which is unwillingly accorded. She cannot remain here as an inferior,—a dependent; one who is under daily obligation,—who is merely tolerated because she has no other place of refuge. My father, there is only one position in which she can remain in the ChÂteau de Gramont, and that is as an equal; as its future mistress; as your daughter; as my wife!"

The countess was stricken dumb with rage; and a sudden revulsion of feeling toward the shrinking girl, whose deep blushes she interpreted into a token of exultation, made her almost as willing to drive her forth, no matter whither, as her son himself.

Bertha, with an exclamation of delight, flung her arms joyfully about Madeleine's neck.

"Maurice, are you mad? Do you forget that you are my son?" was all that the count could gasp out, in his indignant amazement.

"It is as your son that I speak; it is as the inheritor of your name,—that name which Madeleine also bears."

"You seem to have forgotten"—began his father.

Maurice interrupted him,—

"I have not forgotten that I have not reached my majority, and that your consent is necessary to render Madeleine my wife."

(Our readers are doubtless aware that the law in France fixes the majority of a young man at twenty-five, and that he has no power to contract marriage or to control property until that period.)

"But, believe me, my father, even if this were not the case, I should not desire to act without your approval, and I know I could never induce Madeleine to forego your consent to our union. But what valid objections can you have? You desired that Bertha should become my wife. Is not Madeleine precisely the same kin to me as Bertha? Is she not as good, as beautiful?"

"Oh, a thousand times better and lovelier!" exclaimed Bertha, with affectionate enthusiasm.

"There is but one difference: she is poor and Bertha is rich. Think you Bertha's fortune could have one feather's weight in deciding my choice? I thank Heaven for teaching me to account it more noble, more honorable, to ask what the woman I would marry is, than to inquire what she has."

His father made a vain attempt to speak. Maurice went on without noticing the futile effort.

"But this is not all: I dare to hope that Madeleine's heart is mine, while Bertha's is not. My father, you requested that Bertha and I should have an understanding with each other; and we have had one. Bertha has told me that she does not love me. Is it not so, Bertha?"

"I told you that I loved you with all my heart, as the dearest, most delightful cousin in the world!" answered Bertha, naÏvely.

"Just as I love you!" replied Maurice, smiling upon her tenderly. "But, as a lover, you definitely rejected me,—did you not?"

"Oh, yes; just as you refused me. We are perfectly agreed upon that point," she rejoined, with childlike frankness and simplicity.

"For shame, Maurice!" said the countess, in a tone of angry rebuke.

"Grandmother, hear me out. For once my heart must speak, even though it may be silent forever after. I feel that my whole future destiny hangs upon the events of this moment. You love me as a de Gramont should love; you love me with an ambition to see me worthy of my name,—to see that name rendered more lustrous in my person. How far that is possible, my father's decision and yours this hour will determine. I am ardent, impetuous, fond of excitement, reckless at times,—as prone, I fear, to be tempted to vice as to be inspired by virtue. If you withhold your consent to my union with the only woman I can love,—if you drive me to despair,—I am lost! Every pure and lofty aspiration within my nature will be crushed out, and in its place the opposite inclination will spring. I warned you before, when you thwarted the noblest resolution I ever formed. There is yet time to save me from the evil effects of that disappointment, and to spare me the worst results of this. If you grant me Madeleine"—

"Maurice, for pity's sake!" supplicated Madeleine, extending her clasped hands toward him.

Maurice caught the outstretched hands in his, and bent over her with an expression of ineffable love irradiating his countenance.

"Do not speak yet, Madeleine; do not answer until you have heard me,—until you have well comprehended my meaning. You do not know the thousand perils by which a young man is beset in Paris,—the siren lures that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that vortex of follies and vices by which men are daily swallowed up, and from which they emerge sullied and debased. You do not know that, while I am here beside you, listening to the sound of your voice, holding your hand, gazing upon your face, I feel like one inspired, who has power to make his life glorious and keep it pure! Madeleine, would you have me great, distinguished? I shall become so if it be your will. Would you have me lift up our noble name? It shall be exalted at your bidding. Would you reign over my soul and keep it stainless? It is under your angel guardianship. Madeleine, best beloved, will you not save me?"

Madeleine only answered with a look which besought Maurice to forbear.

"Is your rhapsody finished at last?" asked Count Tristan, scornfully. "Is any one else to be permitted to speak?"

"It seems there is but one person whose voice is of any importance to your son," sneered the countess, "and that is Madeleine. It is for her to speak; it is for her to accomplish her work of base ingratitude; it is for her to give the last finishing stroke to the fabric she has secretly been laboring to build up for the last three years."

Madeleine—who, when the voice of Maurice was sounding in her ears, had been unable to control the agitation which caused her breast to heave, and her frame to quiver from head to foot, while confusion flung its crimson mantle over her face—grew suddenly calm when she heard these taunts. The same icy, pallid quietude with which, but a few moments before, she entered the library, returned. She withdrew the hands Maurice had clasped in his, lifted her bowed head, and stood erect, preparing to reply.

"Speak!" commanded the count, furiously. "Speak! since we are nothing and nobody here, and you are everything. Since you are sole arbiter in this family, speak!"

Madeleine could not at once command her voice.

The countess, arguing the worst from her silence, cried, with culminating wrath, "Speak, viper! Dart your fangs into the bosom that has sheltered you: it is bared to receive the deadly stroke; it is ready to die of your venom! Nothing remains but for you to strike!"

"Take courage, dearest Madeleine," whispered Bertha. "They will not be angry long. Speak and tell them that you love Maurice as he loves you, and that you will be the happiest of women if you become his wife."

"Well, your answer, Mademoiselle de Gramont?" urged the countess.

"It will be an answer for which I have only the pardon of Maurice to ask," said Madeleine, speaking slowly, but firmly. "Maurice, my cousin, I shall never be able to tell you,—you can never know,—what emotions of thankfulness you have awakened in my soul, nor how unutterably precious your words are to me. Thus much I may say; for the rest, I can never become your wife!"

"You refuse me because my father and my grandmother have compelled you to do so by their reproaches,—their menaces, I might say!" cried Maurice, wholly forgetting his wonted respect in the rush of tumultuous feelings. "This and this only is your reason for consigning me to misery."

The fear that she had awakened unfilial emotions in the bosom of Maurice infused fresh fortitude into Madeleine's spirit.

"No, Maurice, you are wrong. If my aunt and Count Tristan had not uttered one word on the subject, my answer to you would have been the same."

"How can that be possible? How can I have been so deceived? There is only one obstacle which can discourage me, only one which can force me to yield you up, and that is an admission, from your own lips, that your affections are already bestowed,—that your heart is no longer free."

Madeleine, without hesitation, replied in a clear, steady, deliberate tone, looking her cousin full in the face, and not by the faintest sign betraying the poniard which she heroically plunged into her own devoted breast,—

"My affections are bestowed; my heart is no longer free!"

"Madeleine, Madeleine! you do not love Maurice,—you love some one else?" questioned Bertha, in sorrowful astonishment.

Maurice spoke no word. He stood one moment looking at Madeleine as a drowning man might have looked at the ship that could have saved him disappearing in the distance. Then he murmured, hardly conscious of his own words,—

"And I felt sure her heart was mine! O Madeleine! may you never know what you have done!"

"Forgive me if you can, Maurice. Be generous enough to pardon one who has made you suffer. A bright future is before you. The darkness of this hour will gradually fade out of your memory."

"Say, rather, that you have taken from me my future,—withdrawn its guiding star, and left me a rayless and eternal night. But why should I reproach you? What right had I to deem myself worthy of you? You love another. All is spoken in those words: there is nothing more for me to say, except to thank you for not discarding me without making a confession which annihilates all hope."

There was a dignity in his grief more touching than the most passionate outburst would have been. Even his grandmother, in spite of her joy at Madeleine's declaration, was not wholly unmoved as she contemplated him. Count Tristan's exultation broke through all polite disguise,—

"Madeleine has atoned for much of the past by her present conduct; it has restored her in a measure to"—

Madeleine, as far as her gentle nature permitted, experienced an antipathy toward Count Tristan only surpassed by that which he entertained for her. The sound of his voice grated on her ears; his commendation made her doubt the wisdom and purity of her own act; his approval irritated her as no rebuke could have done. Without waiting for him to conclude his sentence, she grasped Bertha's hand, whispering, "I cannot stay here; I am stifling; come with me."

They left the room together, and took their way in silence to Madeleine's chamber. Bertha carefully closed the door, and, drawing her cousin down into a seat, placed herself beside her, and strove to read her countenance.

"Madeleine, is it possible? How mistaken I have been! You do not love our cousin Maurice. Poor Maurice! It is a dreadful blow to him. And you love some one else. But whom? I know of no gentleman who comes here often,—who is on an intimate footing at the chÂteau,—except"—

A painful suspicion for the first time shot through her mind, and made her pause. Could it be Gaston de Bois whom Madeleine preferred? She always treated him with such marked courtesy. There was no one else,—it must be he! Bertha could not frame the question that hovered about her lips, though to have heard it answered in the negative would have made her heart leap for joy.

Madeleine was too much absorbed by her own reflections to divine those of her cousin.

"At all events," said Bertha, trying to rally and talk cheerfully, though she could not chase that haunting fear from her thoughts, "my aunt is no longer angry with you, and cousin Tristan was well pleased. They will treat you better after this, and your home will be happier."

"My home?" ejaculated Madeleine, in a tone that made Bertha start.

"Yes, yours, until you exchange it for that of the favored lover, of whose name you make such a mystery."

"That will never be!"

"Never? Does he not love you, then? But I know he does,—he must. Every one loves you; no one can help it,—you win all hearts!"

"Count Tristan's, for instance," remarked Madeleine, bitterly.

"Ah, not his, that is true. How wickedly he looked at you when Maurice pictured how dear you were to him! I noticed Cousin Tristan's eyes, and they frightened me. He looked positively fiendish; and when Maurice said"—

To hear those precious words Maurice had spoken,—those words which she could never more forget,—repeated, was beyond Madeleine's powers of endurance: she sprang up, exclaiming, "Do not let us talk of these matters any more to-day, Bertha. It is growing late,—almost six o'clock. It is time for you to dress for dinner. And you have not forgotten the ball to-night?"

"I could not bear to go now. I am sure Maurice will not go; and you,—would you go, even if we did?"

"You will not refuse me a favor, Bertha, though it may cost you some pain to grant it? Go to this ball, and persuade, entreat Maurice to go. If you do not, you will draw down my aunt's displeasure upon me anew, for she will know why you remain at home,—especially as it will be impossible for me to appear in public to-night."

"I would do anything rather than have my aunt displeased with you again; and then there is the beautiful dress you have taken such pains to make."

"I should be very much disappointed if you did not wear it this evening. Now let us prepare for dinner."

As she spoke, Madeleine commenced her own toilet. Bertha stood looking at her as she unbound her long silken hair, and, after smoothing it as carefully as was her wont, rapidly formed the coronal braid, and wound the rich tress about the regal head.

"I cannot comprehend you, Madeleine: you are a marvel to me. A couple of hours ago you were almost frantic with grief,—I never saw any one weep so immoderately; and now you are as serene as though nothing had happened. If your lips were not so very, very white, and your eyes had not such a fixed, unnatural look, I could almost think you had forgotten that anything unusual had occurred."

"Forget it yourself, dear, and make ready for dinner."

Bertha obeyed at least part of the injunction, still wondering over Madeleine's incomprehensible placidity.

The young maidens entered the dining-room together. Maurice came in late. The meal passed almost in silence, though the Countess and Count Tristan made unusual efforts to keep up a conversation.

Bertha was right in imagining Maurice had lost all inclination to appear at the ball. When she brought up the subject, he answered impatiently that he did not intend to go. His grandmother heard the remark, and made an especial request that he would change that decision and accompany them. Bertha added her entreaties; but Maurice seemed inclined to rebel, until she whispered,—

"If you stay at home, my aunt will say it is Madeleine's fault, and she will be vexed with her again. Madeleine begged you would spare her this new trial, and bade me entreat you to go."

Maurice looked across the table, for the first time during dinner, and found Madeleine's eyes turned anxiously upon him.

"I will go," he murmured.

His words were addressed rather to her than to Bertha. A scarcely perceptible smile on the lips of the former was his reward.

No comment was made upon Madeleine's determination to remain at home. But the tone of the countess to her niece, when she was officiating as usual at her aunt's toilet, was gentler than she had ever before used. Not the faintest allusion to the events of the morning dropped from the lips of either.

At last the carriage drove from the door, and Madeleine was left alone with her own thoughts. The mask of composure was no longer needed, yet there was no return of the morning's turbulent emotion.

Are not great trials sent to incite us to great exertions, which we might not have the energy, the wit, perhaps the humility, to undertake, but for the spurring sting of that especial grief? Madeleine had resolutely looked her affliction full in the face; had grown familiar with its sternest, saddest features; had bowed before them, and dashed the tears from her eyes, to see more clearly as that sorrow pointed out a path which all her firmness would be taxed in treading,—a path which she had never dreamed existed for her, until it had been opened, hewn through the rocks of circumstance by that day's heavy blows, that hour's piercing anguish.

Her greatest difficulty lay in the necessity of concealing the step she was about to take from her aunt, whose violent opposition would throw a fearful obstacle in the way. It was easier to avoid than to surmount such a barrier; but if it could not be avoided, it must be surmounted. In that decision she could not waver.