"No,"
"Yourself."
"Indeed! I remember that Madame la Princesse asked me if I could act as escort to a person returning from Libourne to Paris."
"And you refused?"
"I was unavoidably detained in Poitou by important business."
"Yes, you had to receive couriers from Madame de Longueville."
La Rochefoucauld gazed earnestly at the viscountess, as if to search the lowest depths of her heart before the trace of her words had disappeared, and said, riding closer to her side: "Do you reproach me for it?"
"Not at all; your heart is so well disposed in that place, Monsieur le Duc, that you have a right to expect compliments rather than reproaches."
"Ah!" said the duke, with an involuntary sigh; "would to God I had made that journey with you!"
"Why so?"