Letters of Two Brides

Before replying, I kissed her hands.

"Dear aunt," I said, "I shall never forget your kindness; and if it

has not made your nunnery all that it ought to be for my health of

body and soul, you may be sure nothing short of a broken heart will

bring me back again--and that you would not wish for me. You will not

see me here again till my royal lover has deserted me, and I warn you

that if I catch him, death alone shall tear him from me. I fear no

Montespan." She smiled and said:

"Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you. There is certainly

more of the bold Montespan in you than of the gentle la Valliere."

I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could not refrain from

escorting me to the carriage. There her tender gaze was divided

between me and the armorial bearings.

At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in a stupor of the mind

produced by these strange parting words. What can be awaiting me in

this world for which I have so hungered?

To begin with, I found no one to receive me; my heart had been

schooled in vain. My mother was at the Bois de Boulogne, my father at

the Council; my brother, the Duc de Rhetore, never comes in, I am

told, till it is time to dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not

unlike a griffin) and Philippe took me to my rooms.

The suite is the one which belonged to my beloved grandmother, the

Princess de Vauremont, to whom I owe some sort of a fortune which no

one has ever told me about. As you read this, you will understand the

sadness which came over me as I entered a place sacred to so many

memories, and found the rooms just as she had left them! I was to

sleep in the bed where she died.

Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, I burst into tears, forgetting I

was not alone, and remembering only how often I had stood there by her

knees, the better to hear her words. There I had gazed upon her face,

buried in its brown laces, and worn as much by age as by the pangs of

approaching death. The room seemed to me still warm with the heat

which she kept up there. How comes it that Armande-Louise-Marie de

Chaulieu must be like some peasant girl, who sleeps in her mother's

bed the very morrow of her death? For to me it was as though the

Princess, who died in 1817, had passed away but yesterday.