The bell had no sooner rung than Landri would have been glad to flee again as he had been fleeing. He remained.
"Either later, or now," he said to himself, "I must see her. I prefer now, and to know at once the whole extent of this dishonor."
When the servant announced that Monsieur le Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp desired to speak with her, and at once, Valentine was at table, had just finished taking luncheon with her little boy. During the twenty-four hours since the young man had left her upon her promise of a final answer to his offer of marriage, she had been constantly in the throes of the last convulsions of the struggle that had been waged for three years between her love and her duty first, her good sense next. That exclamation with which their interview had ended, that "now I a
