If you urge me further I shall burn our passport." And with that she left him, to seek the solitude of her own room.

In a passion of tears she flung herself upon the little bed, and there she lay, a prey to such an anguish as had never touched her life before.
And now, in that hour of her grief, it came to her--as the sun pierces the mist--that she loved La Boulaye; that she had loved him, indeed, since that night at Boisvert, although she had stifled the very thought, and hidden it even from herself, as being unworthy in one of her station to love a man so lowly-born as Caron.

But now, on the eve of his death, the truth would no longer be denied.

It cried, perchance, the louder by virtue of the pusillanimity of the craven below stairs in whose place Caron was to die; but anyhow, it cried so loudly that it overbore the stern voice of the blood that had hitherto urged her to exclude the sentiment from her heart.

No account now did she take of any difference in station.