On the evening of this same day, immediately after leaving the dinner-table, Angelique complained of not being at all well, and went up at once to her room.

The agitation and excitement of the morning, her struggles against her true self, had quite exhausted her.

She made haste to go to bed, and covering her head with the sheet, with a desperate feeling of disappearing for ever if she could, again the tears came to her relief.
The hours passed slowly, and soon it was night--a warm July night, the heavy, oppressive quiet of which entered through the window, which had been left wide open.

In the dark heavens glistened a multitude of stars.
It must have been nearly eleven o'clock, and the moon, already grown quite thin in its last quarter, would not rise until midnight.
And in the obscure chamber, Angelique still wept nervously a flow of inexhaustible tears, seemingly without reason, when a slight noise at her door caused her to lift up her head.
There was a short silence, when a voice called her tenderly.
"Angelique! Angelique! My darling child!" She recognised the voice of Hubertine.

Without doubt the latter, in her room with her husband, had just heard the distant sound of sobbing, and anxious, half-undressed, she had come upstairs to find out what was the matter with her daughter.
"Angelique, are you ill, my dear ?" Retaining her breath, the young girl made no answer.