Yours affectionately."

So young Granville went to bed full of schemes, each fairer than the
last. Under the powerful protection of the High Chancellor, the Chief
Justice, and his mother's brother--one of the originators of the Code
--he was about to make a start in a coveted position before the
highest court of the Empire, and he already saw himself a member of
the bench whence Napoleon selected the chief functionaries of the
realm. He could also promise himself a fortune handsome enough to keep
up his rank, for which the slender income of five thousand francs from
an estate left him by his mother would be quite insufficient.

To crown his ambitious dreams with a vision of happiness, he called up
the guileless face of Mademoiselle Angelique Bontems, the companion of
his childhood. Until he came to boyhood his father and mother had made
no objection to his intimacy with their neighbor's pretty little
daughter; but when, during his brief holiday visits to Bayeux, his
parents, who prided themselves on their good birth, saw what friends
the young people were, they forbade his ever thinking of her. Thus for
ten years past Granville had only had occasional glimpses of the girl,
whom he still sometimes thought of as "his little wife." And in those
brief moments when they met free from the active watchfulness of their
families, they had scarcely exchanged a few vague civilities at the
church door or in the street. Their happiest days had been those when,
brought together by one of those country festivities known in Normandy
as _Assemblees_, they could steal a glance at each other from afar.

In the course of the last vacation Granville had twice seen Angelique,
and her downcast eyes and drooping attitude had led him to suppose
that she was crushed by some unknown tyranny.