Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/200

204 pretty little face I saw as I approached the carriage was not hers, as I had hoped, but a stranger's.

"Have I not the honor of addressing the Chevalier des Grieux?" she began.

I told her that such was my name.

"I have a letter for you," she then said, "which will tell you what has brought me here, and explain how it is that I have the advantage of being acquainted with your name."

I begged her to excuse me for a few minutes while I went into a tavern near by to read it. She expressed a wish to go with me, and advised me to ask for a private room.

"From whom does this letter come?" I asked, as we were on our way upstairs.

"Read it, and you will see," was her response.

I recognized the writing; it was Manon's; and the substance of what she wrote me was as follows:

G M had welcomed her with a degree of homage and magnificence that surpassed all her expectations—loading her down with gifts and preparing her to lead a life of almost queenly luxury. She assured me, however, that she was not forgetting me in the midst of this new splendor; but she had not been able to persuade G M to take her to the Comédie that evening, and must therefore postpone the pleasure of seeing me until another day. To console me in some degree for the pain which she foresaw this news might occasion me, she had succeeded in getting one of the prettiest of the frail sisterhood of Paris to be the bearer of her note, which was signed "Your faithful love, Manon Lescaut."

There was something so wantonly cruel and insulting to me in the whole tone of this letter that for some moments I scarcely knew whether rage or grief had the mastery in