A Virgin Heart: A Novel

Meanwhile Leonor had received a wound which he could not support with patience. A hundred times a day he thought of Rose. He was not in love with the woman, he was in love with...

The terrace was in a ruinous state, over-grown with grass and brambles and acacias. The girl was leaning on the Parapet, eating mulberries. She displayed her purple-stained hand...

Luncheon passed agreeably for Rose. She was the centre of looks, desires and conversation. M. Lanfranc gallanted without bad taste. She would laugh and then, with sudden serious...

M. Des Boys, who owned several farms, stopped to examine the state of the crops. In some of the fields the corn had been beaten down. He got up on the box beside the driver to a...

When Leonor arrived at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter.... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the...

Satiated, languid with that fatigue which is a blessing to the body and a joy for the lightened brain, Hortense was thinking. She was not sorry to be returning home. The journey...

Leonor was on the watch for the effect of his cure. He saw that evening that it had succeeded. Rose looked like a shadow, a dolorous shadow. She forgot to eat, and would sit loo...

The paths were now visible. One of them, in front of the house, made an oval round a lawn, which looked, at the moment, like a patch of weeds, with all sorts of flowers in the u...

While he was alone, M. Hervart had done his best to make a decision, as he had promised himself to do; but decisions had fluttered like capricious butterflies round his head and...

Rose had laid her plans in such a fashion that the young man had found her in his path. Not to see her was too deliberately to avoid her. If he saw her, he had to take off his h...

It had already grown hot. They sat down in the shade, on a tree trunk. Large harmless ants crawled hither and thither on the bark, but M. Hervart seemed to have lost his interes...

On reaching Barnavast, Leonor had found two letters; which of the two interested him the more he could not tell. One was from M. Des Boys, asking him to come and finish, before...

From 8.57 a.m. till the hour of 6 p.m., when she rang at his door, M. Hervart had precisely one idea, a single one: he must meet Gratienne.

Since his marriage had been decided on, M. Hervart seemed very happy Rose's confidence in him had grown still greater and with it their intimacy. He hesitated now about only one...

Their rapid intimacy did not leave off growing during the following days. M. Des Boys never left the workmen who were making the new paths and from moment to moment he would cal...

In those last autumn days, under the rain of dead leaves, they enjoyed delicious hours. Leonor lived attentively, taking care that no single word of his might shock the young gi...

"Yes, when I get back to Paris. I am taking a holiday here," said M. Hervart, pleased at this mark of confidence. He even added, so as to guard against possible suspicions:

When he came down fairly early next morning, he found M. Des Boys, who was usually invisible till lunch time, walking in the garden with his daughter. He was gesticulating, larg...

M. Hervart soon recognised in one of the visitors a friend of old days, Lanfranc, the architect. The young man, as he found out, was Lanfranc's nephew, pupil and probable succes...