This hasty departure, made without any preliminary message, caused Henri
to feel the liveliest disappointment.

Had he deceived himself, then? Was it, after all, only by chance that
she had so tenderly pronounced his name, and had that familiar
appellative only been drawn from her involuntarily because of her
surprise at beholding his unexpected presence at her bedside?

Regarding the matter from this point of view, the whole romance that he
had constructed on a fragile foundation had really never existed save in
his own imagination!

At this thought his self-esteem suffered cruelly. He felt a natural
impulse to spring into a carriage and drive to the dwelling of Eugenie
Gontier, and there to seek forgetfulness. But he felt that his
bitterness would make itself known even there, and that such a course
would be another affront to the dignity of a woman of heart, whose
loyalty to himself he never had questioned.

Try to disguise it as he would, his sombre mood made itself apparent,
especially to his brother-in-law, who had no difficulty in guessing the
cause, without allowing Henri to suspect that he divined it.

The date for the formal transfer of the Orphan Asylum to the committee
had been fixed for the fifteenth day of May.

On the evening of the fourteenth, at the hour when the General was
signing the usual military documents in his bureau, a domestic presented
to him a letter which, he said, had just been brought in great haste by a
messenger on horseback: