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Updated: August 7, 2024
And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and delusive.
He was sorry that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but in very truth Madame Lenoble, jeune, had lived and died a nonentity.
There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the heir, the pole-star of the household. Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student.
My eyes were opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was mine.
He will be back very shortly." "I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up, do you know, M. Lenoble?" "Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the Russias."
There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. "My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see.
The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday. For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change of dwelling.
To him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young men. "They mock themselves of everything even the religion!" she exclaimed, with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I cannot to them.
When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the neighbours who had known the absent woman. "She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left.
"Well, let me see to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?" "Yes, I will come on Monday." She arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening. "And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased to see you?"
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