ready to leave me,--leave me desolate in a foreign land--'

"'Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!'

"'Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts,
is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is
absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,--this
degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes!
She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends
have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends--it may be
lovers--among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every
licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too
proud to notice her new.'

"'Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.'

"'Think of me, then! I, your mother, forbid you to go.'

"Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded.
She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart was
touched. But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past violence
by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many. The Count,
her husband's younger brother, had invariably tried to make mischief
between husband and wife. He had been the cleverer man of the two, and
had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband. She suspected
him of having instigated that clause in her husband's will, by which the
Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the cousins. The Count
had had some interest in the management of the De Crequy property during
her son's minority. Indeed, I remembered then, that it was through Count
de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard of the apartment which we