“She was going to dig another pit for me,” thought Daniel.

And the idea that he had avoided it made him, for a part of that day at least, forget his sorrow.  But on the following day he found, when he returned home, a formidable document from the navy department, and inside two letters.

One informed him that he had been promoted to be a lieutenant.

The other ordered him to report four days hence at Rochefort, on board the frigate “Conquest,” which was lying in the roadstead waiting for two battalions of marines to be transferred to Cochin China.

Daniel had for long years, and with all the eager ambition of a young man, desired the promotion which he now obtained.  That rank had been the supreme goal of all his dreams since the day on which he learned at the navy school the rudiments of his perilous vocation.  How often, as he stood leaning against the monkey-railing, and saw boats passing by which carried officers, had he said to himself,—­

“When I am a navy lieutenant!”

Well, now he was a lieutenant.  But alas! his wishes, thus realized, filled him only with disgust and bitterness, like those golden apples, which, at a distance, shine brightly in the branches of magic trees, and under the touch of the hand turn into dust and ashes.

For with the news of his promotion came also the fatal order to a distant shore.  Why did they send such an order to him, who had at the department an office in which he could render valuable services, while so many of his comrades, waiting idly in port, watched anxiously, and with almost feverish impatience, for a chance to go into active service?

“Ah!” he said to himself, his heart filled with rage, “how could I fail to recognize in this abominable treachery Miss Brandon’s cunning hand?”

First she had closed against him the gates of Count Ville-Handry’s palace, and thus separated him from his beloved Henrietta, so that they could not meet nor speak to each other.

But this was not enough for the accursed adventuress.  She wanted to raise a barrier between them which should be more than a mere moral and social obstacle, one of those difficulties which no human power, no lover’s ingenuity, could overcome,—­the ocean and thousands of miles.

“Oh, no!” he cried in his anguish, “a thousand times no!  Rather give up my career, rather send in my resignation.”

Hence, the very next day, he put on his uniform, determined to lay the matter, first before that officer who was his immediate superior, but resolved, if he should not succeed there, to go up to the minister himself.

He had never worn that uniform since the night of a large court-ball, where he had danced with Henrietta.  It was nearly a year ago, a few weeks before the death of the Countess Ville-Handry.  As he compared his happiness in those days with his present desperate condition, he was deeply moved; and his eyes were still brimful of tears when he reached the navy department, towards ten o’clock in the morning.