“Where?” she said, laughing.  “In the pleasantest place in the world, but can’t you guess?  I’ll give you a thousand chances.  Give it up, for you will never guess.  We are going to my husband’s house.  Do you know him?”

“Not in the least.”

“So much the better, I thought you didn’t.  But I hope you will like him.  We have lately become reconciled.  Negotiations went on for six months; and we have been writing to one another for a month.  I think it is very kind of me to go and look him up.”

“It certainly is, but what am I going to do there?  What good will I be in this reconciliation?”

“Ah, that is my business.  You are young, amiable, unconventional; you suit me and will save me from the tediousness of a tete-a-tete.”

“But it seems odd to me, to choose the day or the night of a reconciliation to make us acquainted; the awkwardness of the first interview, the figure all three of us will cut,—­I don’t see anything particularly pleasant in that.”

“I have taken possession of you for my own amusement!” she said with an imperious air, “so please don’t preach.”

I saw she was decided, so surrendered myself to circumstances.  I began to laugh at my predicament and we became exceedingly merry.  We again changed horses.  The mysterious torch of night lit up a sky of extreme clearness and shed around a delightful twilight.  We were approaching the spot where our tete-a-tete must end.  She pointed out to me at intervals the beauty of the landscape, the tranquillity of the night, the all-pervading silence of nature.  In order to admire these things in company as it was natural we should, we turned to the same window and our faces touched for a moment.  In a sudden shock she seized my hand, and by a chance which seemed to me extraordinary, for the stone over which our carriage had bounded could not have been very large, I found Madame de T----- in my arms.  I do not know what we were trying to see; what I am sure of is that the objects before our eyes began in spite of the full moon to grow misty, when suddenly I was released from her weight, and she sank into the back cushions of the carriage.

“Your object,” she said, rousing herself from a deep reverie, “is possibly to convince me of the imprudence of this proceeding.  Judge, therefore, of my embarrassment!”

“My object!” I replied, “what object can I have with regard to you?  What a delusion!  You look very far ahead; but of course the sudden surprise or turn of chance may excuse anything.”

“You have counted, then, upon that chance, it seems to me?”