" The dame had been sensibly touched by
Caroline's confidence in her, and she was too loyal to her sex to
repeat even to Froumois her recent conversation with Caroline.
They found plenty of other topics, however, and over the tea and
Cognac the dame and valet passed an hour of delightful gossip.
Caroline, left to the solitude of her chamber, sat silently with her
hands clasped in her lap. Her thoughts pressed inward upon her.
She looked out without seeing the fair landscape before her eyes.
Tears and sorrow she had welcomed in a spirit of bitter penitence
for her fault in loving one who no longer regarded her. "I do not
deserve any man's regard," murmured she, as she laid her soul on the
rack of self-accusation, and wrung its tenderest fibres with the
pitiless rigor of a secret inquisitor. She utterly condemned
herself while still trying to find some excuse for her unworthy
lover. At times a cold half-persuasion, fluttering like a bird in
the snow, came over her that Bigot could not be utterly base. He
could not thus forsake one who had lost all--name, fame, home, and
kindred--for his sake! She clung to the few pitying words spoken by
him as a shipwrecked sailor to the plank which chance has thrown in
his way.
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