be more apparent than Evelyn's indifference to the crowd of flatterers
and suitors that hovered round her, Maltravers no longer dreaded a rival.
He began to feel assured that they had both gone through the ordeal; and
that he might ask for love without a doubt of its immutability and faith.
At this period they were both invited, with the Doltimores, to spend a
few days at the villa of De Montaigne, near St. Cloud. And there it was
that Maltravers determined to know his fate!



CHAPTER IV.

CHAOS of Thought and Passion all confused.--POPE.

IT is to the contemplation of a very different scene that the course of
our story now conducts us.

Between St. Cloud and Versailles there was at that time--perhaps there
still is--a lone and melancholy house, appropriated to the
insane,--melancholy, not from its site, but the purpose to which it is
devoted. Placed on an eminence, the windows of the mansion
command--beyond the gloomy walls that gird the garden ground--one of
those enchanting prospects which win for France her title to _La Belle_.
There the glorious Seine is seen in the distance, broad and winding
through the varied plains, and beside the gleaming villages and villas.
There, too, beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of
Versailles and St. Germains stretch in dark luxuriance around and afar.
There you may see sleeping on the verge of the landscape the mighty
city,--crowned with the thousand spires from which, proud above the rest,
rises the eyry of Napoleon's eagle, the pinnacle of Notre Dame.