This sudden determination looks as strange to me to-day as were the results it brought about; but I had been so forlorn lately, I was so perfectly free from any attachment, any affection, any duty, that the suddenness of the determination pleased me, as any strange new thing pleases us when we are but twenty-five years old.
I sent for my old tutor, and left him my directions and full power to attend to my affairs.
At the end of an hour's time my preparations were all finished, and the carriage of Lord Falmouth was waiting for us. I got into it with him. Our men servants were to follow us in mine.
Ten minutes afterwards we had left Paris.
[LORD FALMOUTH]
CHAPTER XXIX
PLANS
I left Paris with Lord Falmouth under the weight of an overwhelming sorrow. Although indifferent at leaving a worldly life for a peregrination, of whose mysterious end I was still in ignorance, the memory of affections so incompletely severed, which I was leaving behind me, would, I knew, pursue me and overtake me in the midst of the distractions of this journey.
Hélène, Marguerite! sad names which fate cast at me every day as a cruel joke, a remorse, or as a challenge,—I could not forget you, and my conscience avenged you!
Once cracked, let the cup be broken! It matters not. But what folly to cast it still full at their feet! To feel one's lips parched and dry when one might still drink from a fresh, pure spring! It was frightful. In analysing my impressions, I recognised everywhere my instinct of habitual egotism. Never, never did I dream of the horrible wrong that I had done to Marguerite or to Hélène. I thought always of the great happiness, the loss of which I deplored.