She emitted no sighs, but, now and then, a contraction of the lips, a trembling of the hands testified to the inward struggle, and a single tear rolled slowly down her cheek.
From the corner where he had chosen to stand alone, Julien de Buxieres observed, with pain, the mute eloquence of her profound grief, and became once more a prey to the fiercest jealousy.

He could not help envying the fate of this deceased, who was mourned in so tender a fashion.

Again the mystery of an attachment so evident and so tenacious, followed by so strange a rupture, tormented his uneasy soul.

"She must have loved Claudet, since she is in mourning for him," he kept repeating to himself, "and if she loved him, why this rupture, which she herself provoked, and which drove the unhappy man to despair ?" At the close of the absolution, all the assistants defiled close beside Julien, who was now standing in front of the catafalque.

When it came to Reine Vincart's turn, she reached out her hand to M.de Buxieres; at the same time, she gazed at him with such friendly sadness, and infused into the clasp of her hand something so cordial and intimate that the young man's ideas were again completely upset.