"Alas!" M. Fanjat said gently, "do not deceive yourself, monsieur; as
you see her now, she is in full possession of such reason as she has."

Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight of watching
over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, whose waking eyes will
smile for them, will doubtless understand the bliss and anguish that
shook the colonel. For him this slumber was an illusion, the waking
must be a kind of death, the most dreadful of all deaths.

Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the bench and
snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; she sprang lightly to
her feet without scaring away the capricious creature; but as soon as
she saw Philip she fled, followed by her four-footed playmate, to a
thicket of elder-trees; then she uttered a little cry like the note of
a startled wild bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once
before near the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. d'Albon for
the first time. At length she climbed into a laburnum-tree, ensconced
herself in the feathery greenery, and peered out at the _strange man_
with as much interest as the most inquisitive nightingale in the
forest.

"Farewell, farewell, farewell," she said, but the soul sent no trace
of expression of feeling through the words, spoken with the careless
intonation of a bird's notes.

"She does not know me!" the colonel exclaimed in despair. "Stephanie!
Here is Philip, your Philip! . . . Philip!" and the poor soldier went
towards the laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the
Countess eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her
eyes; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and