descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its darkness was tinged with
the fires which it fed. The heart, already so embittered, was stung and
mortified into intolerable shame and wrath. From the home that should
have been hers, in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down on
the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had supplanted her, as one
worthless and polluted. Though, from motives of obvious delicacy, Vernon
had not said expressly that he had seen the letter to Mainwaring, the
unfamiliar and formal tone which he assumed indirectly declared it, and
betrayed the impression it had made, in spite of his reserve. A living
man then was in possession of a secret which justified his disdain, and
that man was master of Laughton! The suppressed rage which embraced the
lost lover extended darkly over this witness to that baffled and
miserable love. But what availed rage against either? Abandoned and
despoiled, she was powerless to avenge. It was at this time, when her
prospects seemed most dark, her pride was most crushed, and her despair
of the future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard as the only
friend left to her under the sun. Even the vices she perceived in him
became merits, for they forbade him to despise her. And now, this man
rose suddenly into another and higher aspect of character. Of late,
though equally deferential to her, there had been something more lofty in
his mien, more assured on his brow; gleams of a secret satisfaction, even
of a joy, that he appeared anxious to suppress, as ill in harmony with
her causes for dejection, broke out in his looks and words. At length,
one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he informed her that he was
free to return to France; that even without the peace between England and
France, which (known under the name of the Peace of Amiens) had been just
concluded, he should have crossed the Channel. The advocacy and interest
of friends whom he had left at Paris had already brought him under the
special notice of the wonderful man who then governed France, and who
sought to unite in its service every description and variety of