"Well, shall I tell you? I thought you were unhappy because you are going to be married to my uncle."
"Folly, folly, my dear little prude. Your uncle is a very good man, and a very grand match. I ought to be delighted at a prospect so brilliant."
Even while Lucille spoke, she felt a powerful impulse to tell her little companion all—her fondness for Dubois, her aversion for Monsieur Le Prun, the scene with the strange woman, and her own forebodings; but such a confession would have been difficult to reconcile with her fixed resolution to let the affair take its course, and at all hazards marry the man whom, it was vain to disguise it from herself, she disliked, distrusted, and feared.
"I was going to give you comfort by my own story. I never told you before that I, too, am affianced."
"Affianced! and to whom?"
"To the Marquis de Secqville."
"Hey! Why that is the very gentleman of whom Monsieur de Blassemare told us such wicked stories the other day."
"Did he?" she said, with a sigh. "Well, I often feared he was a prodigal; but heaven, I trust, will reclaim him."
"But you do not love him?"
"No. I never saw him but once."