whose joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing
ought to have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my
woes to the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish
that I spoke.--God will forgive me!

"Oh! if my life were to be your life, what would I not do? Men, the
world, Fate, Nature, God Himself, I believe, make us pay for love with
the most cruel grief. I must pay for ten years of happiness and
twenty-four years of despair, of ceaseless sorrow, of bitterness--"

"But you had ten years, dear mamma, and I have had but three!" said
the self-absorbed girl.

"Nothing is lost yet," said Adeline. "Only wait till Wenceslas comes."

"Mother," said she, "he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not
go,' and he went. And that over his child's cradle."

"For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most
infamous actions--even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem.
We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were
ended, and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer
doubly by suffering with my child. Courage--and silence!--My Hortense,
swear that you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me,
never let them be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as
your mother has been."

Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.

"So it would seem," said Wenceslas, as he came in, "that Stidmann has