The count, in the meantime, walked up and down in the large room. He was
so much changed, that one might have failed to recognize him. There was
a strange want of steadiness in his movements; he looked almost like a
paralytic, whose crutches had suddenly broken down. Was he conscious
of the immense loss which he had suffered? His vanity was too great to
render that very probable.

"I shall master my grief as soon as I go back to work," he said.

He ought not to have done it; but he resumed his duties as a politician
at a time when they had become unusually difficult, and when great
things were expected of him. Two or three absurd, ridiculous, in fact
unpardonable blunders, ruined him forever. He lost his reputation as a
statesman, and with it his influence.

As yet, however, his reputation remained uninjured. No one suspected the
truth. They attributed the sudden failure of his faculties to the great
sorrow that had befallen him in the death of his wife.

"Who would have thought that he had loved her so deeply?" they asked one
another.

Henrietta was as much misled as the others, and perhaps even more. Her
respect and her admiration, so far from being diminished, only increased
day by day. She loved him all the more dearly as she watched the
apparent effect of his incurable grief.

He was really deeply grieved, but only by his fall. How had it come
about? He tortured his mind in vain; he could not find a plausible