After courteously saluting the ladies present, Valerie subsided into a dull silence, from which she could not arouse herself; but her voice was not missed, since every visitor seemed anxious to talk rather than listen, and therefore kept up a chattering that would have carried off the palm in a contest with a village sewing-circle or aviary full of excited magpies.

Valerie, the last to enter, was also the first to rise, but Lady C.

detained her by a slight signal, and she sat down again, and relapsed into dullness and silence.

One by one the visitors arose and took leave, chattering to the very last.

As soon as the two ladies were left alone together, Lady C. took Valerie's hand, and gazing earnestly in her face, said:

"What is the matter with you, my child? You look pale and ill. Although I am so glad to see you, under any circ.u.mstances, I am half inclined to scold you for coming out at all."

For a moment Valerie felt inclined to open her oppressed and suffering heart to this sweet, matronly friend, and tell her the whole, bitter truth, and seek her wise counsel; but again the want of moral courage, which had always been so fatal to her welfare, sealed her lips.

"Well," said Lady C., after a short pause for that answer that never came, "I will not press the question. 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness.'"

"Yes," murmured Valerie, in a very low voice. Then, not to seem indifferent or unsocial, and also, if the truth must be told of her, to gratify a gnawing curiosity, she inquired:

"How goes the expected marriage of your niece, madame?"

"I cannot tell you dear. I have been daily expecting some communication on the subject from de Volaski: but as yet he has made none. After coming to Paris for the purpose, (for of course his office in the emba.s.sy is a mere sinecure and a plausible excuse,) he betrays the bashfulness of a girl in pressing his suit; but some men, some of the best and purest of men, are just that way--in love affairs as shy women," said her ladyship.

Valerie smiled bitterly. She thought she understood the reason why the Count de Volaski was in no hurry to press the suit for marriage with a dreaming girl, to whom he had been arbitrarily contracted when he was a boy of fifteen, and she a child of twelve.

"I shall, however, write again to her father. I will not have my sister's daughter wasting her youth in a convent, while waiting for a tardy suitor."

Valerie smiled again, and then arose to take her leave.

Lady C. kissed her affectionately, and promised soon to visit her at the Hotel de la Motte.

"But--how long will you remain there?" inquired her ladyship.

"I do not know. Until some business connected with my father's will shall be arranged, I think. We are there on sufferance only. My cousin, Louis, the present baron, wrote from Algiers, very kindly asking us to occupy the Hotel de la Motte at any time when business or pleasure should call us to Paris. The house was the home of my childhood, and I prefer to live in it as long as I may. The duke, though he would rather live at the '_Trois Freres_,' yields to my whim, and so we occupy the Hotel de la Motte, but I do not know for how long a time."

"Until you leave Paris, I presume?"

"Yes, probably," answered Valerie, as with another kiss, she took leave of her kind friend.

"Shall I ever see her sweet face, hear her sweet voice again?" murmured the young d.u.c.h.ess, as she pa.s.sed out to her carriage.

"You posted my letter?" she inquired of the footman who opened the carriage-door.

"Yes, your grace."

"That will do. Home."

The footman repeated the order to the coachman, who drove back to the Hotel de la Motte.

As Valerie entered her morning-room after laying off her bonnet and wrappings, she found the Duke of Hereward there, reading the papers.

He arose and placed a chair for her, saying kindly:

"I hope your drive has done you good, dear; if it has not been so long as to fatigue you."

"I have only been to the Hotel Borghese to call on Lady C.," replied Valerie, sinking into the chair and leaning back.

"Now that I look well at you, I see that you are tired. A very little exertion seems to fatigue you now, Valerie. I do not understand your condition. It makes me anxious. I have asked Velpeau to call and see you.

He will look in this afternoon."

"Thanks, you are very kind--too kind to me, as fretful and miserable as I am," replied Valerie, with a momentary compunction--only a momentary one, for the deep fear, horror and despair which had seized her soul left her little sensibility to comparative trifles.

"My poor child," said the duke, looking compa.s.sionately on her pale, worn face, "do you not know that I can make all allowance for you? You are suffering very much. I hope Velpeau will be able to do something for you.

You know he stands at the head of the medical profession in Paris, which is as much as to say, in the world."

"Yes, I know," said Valerie, indifferently. Then, with sudden earnestness, she exclaimed: "I wish _you_ would do something for me."

"Why, my poor girl, I would do anything in the world for you. Tell me what you want me to do."

"I know you cannot leave Paris now, and so you cannot, yourself, take me to England; but I wish to go there; I wish you to send me there to Hereward Hold, where we pa.s.sed so many peaceful months."

"To send you there _alone_, Valerie?" inquired the duke, in surprise.

"No, but with my personal attendants, and with any discreet old lady you may choose to appoint as my companion, if, like an old Spanish husband, you think your young wife may require watching when she is out of your sight," she added, with a relapse into her irritable mood.

"Valerie! you wrong me and yourself by such a thought," said the duke, gravely.

"I know I do, and I know I am a wretch! but I want to go to England.

I want to get away from everybody, and be by myself. You promised to do what I wanted done. That is what I want done."

"Do you wish 'to get away' from _me_, Valerie?"

"Yes, from you and from _everybody_, except from my servants, who are not my companions, and therefore don't bore me."

"It must be as I thought," said the duke to himself; "all this eccentricity, this nervous irritability has a natural cause, and not an alarming one, and it must be humored."

"Will you keep your promise?" she testily inquired.

"Certainly, my dear child. Anything to please you. You will see Velpeau this afternoon. If after consulting him you still think it necessary to leave Paris for Hereward Hold, I will send you there under proper protection. By the by, you succeed very well in getting away from your friends I think. The Count de Volaski called here while you were away this forenoon. He seemed disappointed in not seeing you. He looks ill.

I never saw a man change so within the last few days. I should not wonder if he were on the very verge of a bad fever. I wish you had seen him. He was quite a friend of yours in St. Petersburg, I believe."

"I used to see him every day in the public a.s.semblies to which we were always going. I wish you wouldn't talk about him," gasped Valerie, with a nervous shudder, as she arose and left the room.

"What a little misanthrope she has grown to be; but it is only a temporary affliction. She will get over it in a few weeks," said the duke to himself, as he resumed the reading of his newspaper.

The next day Valerie arose at her usual hour, and breakfasted _tete-a-tete_ with the duke. She knew that this day must decide her fate, and she tried to nerve herself to bear all that it might bring her, even as the frailest women sometimes brace themselves to bear torture and death.

At eleven in the forenoon, the duke left the house to go to the Hotel de Ville to keep an appointment that would detain him until three in the afternoon.

Valerie knew all about this appointment, and had therefore fixed the hour of noon as the safest time for her interview with the count.