Page:The Story of Manon Lescaut and of the Chevalier des Grieux.pdf/30

34 After having eaten my supper with greater zest than I had ever before felt for that meal, I withdrew to put our project into execution. My arrangements were the more easily made from the fact that what little luggage I had was already packed in preparation for my intended return home the following day. I had thus nothing further to do than to have my trunk removed, and to hire a chaise, to be ready at five o'clock in the morning—at which hour the town gates would be opened. But I encountered an unforeseen obstacle, which came within an ace of defeating my whole scheme.

Tiberge, though only three years my elder, was a young man of mature judgment and very virtuous habits of life. He loved me with a deep affection such as is rarely to be met with. The beauty of Mademoiselle Manon, my eagerness to escort her, and the evident pains I had been at to get rid of him, had all combined to awaken some suspicion of my infatuation in his mind.

He had not ventured to return to the inn where he had left me, for fear that I might be annoyed at his doing so, but had gone to await me at my lodgings, where I found him when I came in, although it was ten o'clock in the evening. His presence disconcerted me, and he was not long in perceiving that I found it irksome.

"I am sure," he said to me frankly, "that you have some project in mind which you are anxious to conceal from me; I can see it by your manner."

I replied, brusquely enough, that I was not obliged to account to him for all my intentions.

"No," he responded, "but you have always treated me as a friend, and that relation presupposes some degree of confidence and candor."

He pressed me so earnestly and so persistently to disclose my secret to him, that, never having been in the