“Who told you we were intimate, Maximilian?”

“No one, but you appeared to be so. From the manner in which you walked and talked together, one would have thought you were two schoolgirls telling your secrets to each other.”

“We were having a confidential conversation,” returned Valentine; “she was owning to me her repugnance to the marriage with M. de Morcerf; and I, on the other hand, was confessing to her how wretched it made me to think of marrying M. d’Épinay.”

“Dear Valentine!”

“That will account to you for the unreserved manner which you observed between me and Eugénie, as in speaking of the man whom I could not love, my thoughts involuntarily reverted to him on whom my affections were fixed.”