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130 to conceal it, she was forced to say she was ill: she said it too in order to employ her people about her, and to give the duke time to retire. When she had made some reflection, she thought she had been deceived, and that her fancying she saw monsieur de Nemours was only the effect of imagination. She knew he was at Chambort; she saw no probability of his engaging in so hazardous an enterprise; she had a desire several times to re-enter the bower, and to see if there was anybody in the garden. She wished perhaps as much as she feared to find the duke de Nemours there; but at last, reason and prudence prevailed over her other thoughts, and she found it better to continue in the doubt she was in, than to run the hazard of satisfying herself about it. She was a long time ere she could resolve to leave a place to which she thought the duke was so near; and it was almost day-break when she returned to the castle.

The duke de Nemours stayed in the garden, as long as there was any light; he was not without hopes of seeing madam de Cleves again, though he was convinced that she knew him, and that she went away only to avoid him; but when he found the doors were shut, he knew he had nothing more to hope; he went to take horse near the place where monsieur de Cleves's gentleman was watching him. This gentleman followed him to the same village where he had left him in the evening. The Duke resolved to stay there all the day, in order to return at night to Colomiers, to see if madam de Cleves would yet have the cruelty to shun him, or not expose herself to view: though he was very much pleased to find himself so much in her thoughts, yet was he extremely grieved at the same time, to see her so naturally bent to avoid him.

Never was passion so tender and so violent as that of monsieur de Nemours; he walked under the willows, along a little brook which ran behind the house, where he lay concealed; he kept himself as much out of the way as possible, that he might not be seen by any body;