The elderly ladies
shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn
significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow,
or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could
suspect any harm.
Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she
filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him
and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who
had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter.
"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty
for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt
Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against
her, except that she is not Rachel."
This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined
master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at
Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He
no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in
his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained.
"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother.
"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested
the father.
CHAPTER III.
"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR."
Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave
Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the
Luxembourg gardens.
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