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 "His extravagance! (again repeated Madeline) Monsieur D'Alembert extravagant! Gracious heaven how you astonish me! By what means was the countess de Merville prevailed on to let her daughter marry a man of dissipation?"

"He appeared both to the Countess and her daughter a very different man before, to what he did after his marriage," answered Agatha.

"And to the too late discovery of his real character the melancholy of the Countess was to be imputed," said Madeline.

Agatha looked at her but made no reply.

A dreadful idea started in the mind of Madeline:—the words of Floretta, the solemn manner in which she had been bound by the countess to conceal the black transaction in the chapel, seemed to declare it was a just one: she grasped the arm of Agatha, she fastened her eyes upon her as if they