Nothing could make her forget the past. Notwithstanding his goodness and kindness, her betrothed seemed to weary her, and even wound her.
She dared not open her heart to him. The baron, too, was the best of fathers, yet absolutely incapable of comprehending the unaccountable anguish of his daughter.
Concentrated by silence, and overexcited by solitude, a sentiment mingled with curiosity, admiration, and almost hatred, began to take deep root in the heart of Reine.
Many times she shuddered to see that the gravity of Honorât oppressed her. In her thought she reproached him for having nothing in his career that was adventurous or romantic.
She compared his peaceful and uniform life with the mystery which surrounded the stranger.
Then, ashamed of such thoughts, she sought to fix her hopes upon her approaching union with Honorât,—a union so sacred that, in the fulfilment of its duties, every foolish dream and imagination would be effaced.
Such was the state of Reine’s heart when, by an inexplicable mystery, she found in the same day two objects, the sight of which redoubled her anguish and excited every power of her imagination.
This stranger, or one of his agents, was then near her, though invisible.
She could not suspect the servants within the walls of Maison-Forte of being in collusion with the stranger. All of them were old servants, grown gray in the service of Raimond V.
Reared, so to speak, by them, she was too well acquainted with their life and morality to believe them capable of underhand manoeuvres. The fact that the picture was placed on her praying-stool in her chamber, disquieted her above all.