At Length The Report Reached The Ears Of The Baron De Palfoy, Who, Tho'
He Did Not Immediately Give An Entire Credit To It, Thought It Became
Him To Do Every Thing In His Power To Silence It.
Accordingly he called his daughter to him one day, and having told her
the liberty which the world took in censuring her conduct on Horatio's
account, commanded her to avoid all occasions of it for the future, by
seeing him no more.
The confusion she was in, and which she had not artifice wholly to
conceal from the penetrating baron, more convinced him, than all he had
been told, that there was in reality some tender intercourse between
them; but resolving to be fully ascertained, he said no more to her at
that time, but dispatched a messenger immediately to St. Germains,
desiring Horatio to come to him the same day.
The lover readily obeyed this summons, but not without some
apprehensions of the motive: the hints daily given him, joined to the
alteration, not only in the behaviour of mademoiselle de Coigney, but
likewise of the baron de la Valiere, gave him but too just room to fear
his passion was no longer a secret.
The father of Charlotta received him with great courtesy, but nothing of
that pleasantness with which he had looked on him ever since he had
defended him from the robbers. Horatio, said he, I am indebted to you
for my life, and would willingly make what recompence is in my power for
the obligation I have to you:
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