self-control; but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back
to one supreme hope; she found a refuge in the belief in a future
life, a wonderful thought which enabled her to take up her painful task
afresh. No elation of victory followed those terrible inward battles
and throes of anguish; no one knew of those long hours of sadness; her
haggard glances met no response from human eyes, and during the brief
moments snatched by chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded
and in solitude.

One evening in January 1820, the Marquise became aware of the full
gravity of the crisis, gradually brought on by force of circumstances.
When a husband and wife know each other thoroughly, and their relation
has long been a matter of use and wont, when the wife has learned to
interpret every slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns
thoughts and facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or
a remark so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon
subsequent reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A wife
not seldom suddenly awakes upon the brink of a precipice or in the
depths of the abyss; and thus it was with the Marquise. She was
feeling glad to have been left to herself for some days, when the real
reason of her solitude flashed upon her. Her husband, whether fickle
and tired of her, or generous and full of pity for her, was hers no
longer.

In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her sacrifices,
all that she had passed through, she remembered only that she was a
mother. Looking forward, she thought of her daughter's fortune, of the
future welfare of the one creature through whom some gleams of
happiness came to her, of her Helene, the only possession which bound
her to life.