“Ah, I am losing my senses!” he exclaimed, rising suddenly. “And Henrietta, who has been waiting for me—what must she think of me?”
Miss Ville-Handry, at that very moment, had reached that degree of anxiety which becomes well-nigh intolerable. After having waited for Daniel all the evening of the day before, and after having spent a sleepless night, she had surely expected him to-day, counting the seconds by the beating of her heart, and starting at the noise of every carriage in the street. In her despair, knowing hardly what she was doing, she was thinking of running herself to University Street, to Daniel’s house, when the door opened.
In the same indifferent tone in which he announced friends and enemies, the servant said,—
“M. Daniel Champcey.”
Henrietta was up in a moment. She was about to exclaim,—
“What has kept you? What has happened?” But the words died away on her lips.
It had been sufficient for her to look at Daniel’s sad face to feel that a great misfortune had befallen her.
“Ah! you had been right in your fears,” she said, sinking into a chair.
“Alas!”
“Speak: let me know all.”