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Rh tentions in her behalf; her facile fancy already pictured existence at the gorgeous court of Versailles, herself one of those admired and fortunate beings of whose elegance, beauty, and luxury she had heard so much: and the picture was very alluring to the pleasure-loving fancy of the girl. True, the figure of Gaston de Montarnaud, whom she did not very much like, made an unpleasant shadow in the scene; but Valerie had a grand capacity for closing her eyes upon things she did not wish to see, and, like many another girl called to a similar decision, she was too maidenly a maid to know how important an item the husband is in a woman's married life.

Contrasting with Gaston to whom she was indifferent, stood François whom she loved,—no, liked with a promise of love,—and toward whom just now she felt a species of resentment for having, by his declaration of that afternoon, evoked certain feelings in her own heart interfering with the single-sighted delight she otherwise would have felt in the brilliant prospect opened to her by Gaston and his father.

To sum up this most contrarious and yet essentially feminine state of mind, she foresaw that she should hate the man she wished to marry, and she already began to love him whose fortunes she did not wish to share; and she was vexed at François that he could not give her what Gaston offered, and felt a cold repulsion toward Gaston, in that he coupled himself with what he offered.

No wonder, plunged into this conflict of two tides, and not knowing into what maelström they would soon