However that be, I led Kondjé-Gul back to my aunt's side, and she did

not dance any more.

From a corner of the drawing-room I saw some half-a-dozen of my friends

march up to get introduced to her, anxiously longing to obtain the same

favour as I had, and I laughed at their discomfiture.

Meanwhile the commodore, who, by the way, is a highly educated and

thoroughly good-natured man, had marked me out, and was so kind in his

attentions to me, that I felt constrained, in spite of my scruples, to

accept his advances. His relations with my uncle, moreover, might have

made the cold reserve which I had so far maintained appear singular.

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Finally, towards the middle of the entertainment, when he was going away

with his daughters and Kondjé-Gul, whom he had to see home to Madame

Montier's, I had, without meaning it, so completely won his good

opinion, that I found myself invited to accompany my aunt who was dining

with him the next day but one.

Although it was only a fatality that had led to this extraordinary

complication, I must own that, when I began to think over it and to

contemplate the possible consequences, I felt a considerable anxiety.

Hitherto, by a compromise with conscience, which Kondjé-Gul's childlike

simplicity rendered almost excusable, I had been enabled to deceive

myself about the consequences of this school-friendship with two

American girls who were strangers to me. This, I thought, would never be

more than a chance companionship, and when her time with them was over,

the Misses Maud and Suzannah would remain ignorant of her real position,

which they had no occasion for suspecting. But I could not fail to

perceive that our relations with the commodore must aggravate our

difficulties to a remarkable extent.

Our society affords shelter, certainly, to many a hidden romance: we

have both honest loves and shady intrigues confused and interlaced in

its mazes so that they escape all notice. Yet, certain as I felt that

nothing could occur to betray our extraordinary secret, I was troubled

all the same at the part which I should have to play in this family with

which my uncle was on such intimate terms.

Placed face to face with the inexorable logic of facts, I could not long

deceive myself as to the course which the most elementary sense of

delicacy prescribed to me. I could see clearly during this last evening

party, that Kondjé-Gul had no further need of Madame Montier's lessons

to complete her social education. Count Térals house being now ready to

receive her, I need only settle her there with her mother in order to

commence at once the happy life of which we had so often dreamed. Then

it would be easy to withdraw gradually from the society of the Montague

girls, and thus banish all future risks.




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