"What!" stammered she; "you, lady!"

"I come to tell you that I suffer, and am ashamed of my sufferings. Yes,"
added the young lady, with a touching expression, "yes--of all
confessions, I am about to make the most painful--I love--and I blush for
my love."

"Like myself!" cried Mother Bunch, involuntarily, clasping her hands
together.

"I love," resumed Adrienne, with a long-pent-up grief; "I love, and am
not beloved--and my love is miserable, is impossible--it consumes me--it
kills me--and I dare not confide to any one the fatal secret!"

"Like me," repeated the other, with a fixed look. "She--a queen in
beauty, rank, wealth, intelligence--suffers like me. Like me, poor
unfortunate creature! she loves, and is not loved again."

"Well, yes! like you, I love and am not loved again," cried Mdlle. de
Cardoville; "was I wrong in saying, that to you alone I could confide my
secret--because, having suffered the same pangs, you alone can pity
them?"

"Then, lady," said Mother Bunch, casting down her eyes, and recovering
from her first amazement, "you knew--"

"I knew all, my poor child--but never should I have mentioned your
secret, had I not had one to entrust you with, of a still more painful
nature. Yours is cruel, but mine is humiliating. Oh, my sister!" added