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It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which

on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the

Countess She could not doubt that he hadand of which he had indicated the importance But if he had

missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak? Why did he not cry

the alarive her that

opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage failed, her

resolution died within her?

Above all, as the secret of his strangewhich broke from him, only to be hushed by her look of

astonish the infection,

h in the air and caught

it?

Ay, what? Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been

robbed of that of which he ive account--why did he cast off his

est? She wondered what the , saw them stare, saw that they watched hiether What were they

thinking of it? She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more insistent

than any to which the extrerip her heart

Twenty hours of rest had lifted her froht had cast her; still her li had

shaken under her But the cool freshness of the early sureen landscape and the winding Loir, beside which

their road ran, had not failed to revive her spirits; and if he had shown

hihts, or darting

hither and thither the glance of suspicion, she felt that she could have

faced him, and on the first opportunity could have told him the truth