"Ah! how I thank you!" cried Antoinette. "You have restored my happiness and my peace of mind."
Love is selfish, and Antoinette knew nothing of Dolores' struggles. She did not attempt to fathom the motives of her friend, and relieved by the assurance she had just received, and no longer doubting her ability to regain her lost influence over Philip, she passed suddenly from the poignant suffering we have described to a state of peaceful security.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE THUNDERBOLT.
Three days passed, leaving the situation of affairs unchanged. Antoinette and Dolores saw Philip but seldom, though they were living under the same roof, so persistently did he avoid them. If he chanced to enter the hall when they were there, he took refuge with some of the groups of gentlemen, where the two girls would not be likely to approach him unless they had something of great importance to communicate to their ungracious friend.
What Philip utterly lacked, after the events recounted in the last chapter, was resignation. He felt, that Dolores was irrevocably lost to him, and that even if she left the prison alive, she would instantly place an impassable barrier between them; but though he was convinced of this, he could not make up his mind to submit to a decision that destroyed all his hopes of happiness; so he hoped and despaired by turns, sometimes assuring himself that he could find words sufficiently eloquent to move Dolores, sometimes admitting with a sort of desperation that nothing could shake the firmness of the young girl who had resolved to sacrifice her happiness for the sake of duty.
Antoinette and Dolores respected his sadness and his evident desire for solitude. They spent most of their time together in their own little room, happy in being again united, and bearing the trials that beset them on every side with wonderful fortitude. Each evening found them astonished that they had not been summoned before the Revolutionary Tribunal; and each evening they said, not without anguish: