only the third time she had left the château for as long as overnight
since returning to it after her husband's death. When Duchemin did see
her, she seemed at once exhilarated and subdued, and he thought to
detect in her attitude toward him a trace of apprehensiveness.

She knew, of course; Duchemin at thirty-eight was too well versed in
lore of women to dream he had succeeded in keeping his secret from the
fine intuition of one of thirty. But--he told himself a bit
bitterly--she ought to know him well enough by this time to know more,
that she need not fear he would ever speak his heart to her. The social
gulf that set their lives apart was all too wide to be spanned but by a
miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivété of
soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if
it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in
the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could only
seem silly....

He was permitted to be about the house in the afternoon and to dine
with Eve and Louise in the draughty, shadow-haunted dining hall. Madame
de Sévénié was indisposed and kept to her room; she suffered from time
to time from an affection of the heart, nothing remarkable in one of
her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings. But the
presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the
others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which
Duchemin's attempts at levity could not prevail. The talk languished
and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic
offered itself. The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue. It
happened to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy morrow. She
confessed to a minor superstition, she did not really like to start a
journey in the rain...