thought my heart would break with the sense of
desolation. So it was in no cheerful frame of
mind that we approached Les Rochers, and I
thought that perhaps it was because I was so
unhappy that the place looked so dreary. On
one side, the château looked like a raw new
building, hastily run up for some immediate
purpose, without any growth of trees or
underwood near it, only the remains of the stone
used for building, not yet cleared away from the
immediate neighbourhood, although weeds and
lichens had been suffered to grow near and over
the heaps of rubbish; on the other, were the
great rocks from which the place took its name,
and rising close against them, as if almost a
natural formation, was the old castle, whose
building dated many centuries back.

It was not large nor grand, but it was strong
and picturesque, and I used to wish that we
lived in it rather than in the smart half-furnished
apartment in the new edifice, which had
been hastily got ready for my reception.
Incongruous as the two parts were, they were
joined into a whole by means of intricate
passages and unexpected doors, the exact positions
of which I never fully understood. M. de la
Tourelle led me to a suite of rooms set apart for
me, and formally installed me in them, as in a
domain of which I was sovereign. He apologised
for the hasty preparation which was all
he had been able to make for me, but promised,
before I asked, or even thought of complaining,
that they should be made as luxurious as heart
could wish before many weeks had elapsed. But
when, in the gloom of an autumnal evening, I
caught my own face and figure reflected in
all the mirrors, which showed only a mysterious
background in the dim light of the many
candles which failed to illuminate the great
proportions of the half-furnished salon, I clung to
M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be taken to
the rooms he had occupied before his marriage,
he seemed angry with me, although he affected
to laugh, and so decidedly put aside the notion
of my having any other rooms but these, that I
trembled in silence at the fantastic figures and
shapes which my imagination called up as
peopling the background of those gloomy
mirrors. There was my boudoir, a little less
dreary—my bedroom, with its grand and
tarnished furniture, which I commonly made into
my sitting-room, locking up the various doors
which led into the boudoir, the salon, the
passage—all but one, through which M. de la
Tourelle always entered trom his own apartments
in the older part of the castle. But this
preference of mine for occupying my bedroon
annoyed M. de la Tourelle, I am sure, though
he did not care to express his displeasure. He
would always allure me back into the salon
which I disliked more and more from its
complete separation from the rest of the building by
the long passage into which all the doors of my
apartment opened. This passage was closed by
heavy doors and portières, through which I
could not hear a sound from the other parts of
the house, and, of course, the servants could not
hear any movement or cry of mine unless
expressly summoned. To a girl brought up as I
had been in a household where every individual
lived all day in the sight of every other member
of the family, never wanted either cheerful
words or the sense of silent companionship, this
grand isolation of mine was very formidable;
and the more so, because M. de la Tourelle, as
landed proprietor, sportsman, and what not, was
generally out of doors the greater part of every
day, and sometimes for two or three days at a
time. I had no pride to keep me from
associating with the domestics; it would have been
natural to me in many ways to have sought
them out for a word of sympathy in those
dreary days when I was left so entirely to
myself, had they been like our kindly German
servants. But I disliked them, one and all;
I could not tell why. Some were civil, but
there was a familiarity in their civility which
repelled me; others were rude, and treated me
more as if I were an intruder than their master's
chosen wife; and yet of the two sets I liked
these last the best.

The principal male servant belonged to this
latter class. I was very much afraid of him,
he had such an air of suspicious surliness
about him in all he did for me; and yet
M. de la Tourelle spoke of him as most
valuable and faithful. Indeed, it sometimes
struck me that Lefebvre ruled his master in
some things; and this I could not make out.
For, while M. de la Tourelle behaved towards
me as if I were some precious toy or idol, to be
cherished, and fostered, and petted, and
indulged, I soon found out how little I, or,
apparently, any one else, could bend the terrible will
of the man who had on first acquaintance
appared to me too effeminate and languid to exert
his will in the slightest particular. I had learnt
to know his face better now; and to see that
some vehement depth of feeling, the cause of
which I could not fathom, made his grey eye
glitter with pale light, and his lips contract, and
his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions.
But all had been so open and above board at
home, that I had no experience to help me to
unravel any mysteries among those who lived
under the same roof. I understood that I had
made what Madame Rupprecht and her set
would have called a great marriage, because I
lived in a château with many servants, bound
ostensibly to obey me as a mistress. I understood
that M. de la Tourelle was fond enough
of me in his way—proud of my beauty, I dare
say (for he often enough spoke about it to me)
—but he was also jealous, and suspicious, and
uninfluenced by my wishes, unless they tallied
with his own. I felt at this time as if I could
have been fond of him too, if he would have let
me: but I was timid from my childhood, and
before long my dread of his displeasure (coming
down like thunder into the midst of his love,
for such slight causes as a hesitation in reply,
a wrong word, or a sigh for my father),
conquered my humorous inclination to love one
who was so handsome, so accomplished, so