Again, apologies for the long wait. Exams and revision, revision and exams! This chapter brings the story on quite a long way, and I hope you enjoy...

If I had chosen any other doorway on that street, I dread to think what might have happened to me. The house I had inadvertently chosen was owned by the de Vire family, old aristocrats who had lost their title, but not their wealth, in the Revolution of the last century. It was the head of this family, thirty-year-old Colonel Xavier de Vire, who discovered me the following morning. The house was not the residence of the de Vires, but had been kept for three generations as a place for faithful servants to live out their days once their time of service was over. At the time of my arrival, it was occupied by Colonel de Vire's former nursemaid, Madame Maillot. When the Colonel found me asleep in his doorway, he was making his monthly visit to this good lady. This is where I must thank God for my good fortune. Instead of simply kicking me into the street, as most men would do to a vagrant girl, the Colonel picked me up in his arms, and took me into the house. He told me later that he had looked at my face and thought me the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He said that despite my injuries there was a hopeful innocence about me, and he wanted to save me. In that moment, he told me, he fell in love.

I did not awake from my sleep until noon. Finding myself in a plush bedchamber, wearing a clean nightgown with an elderly woman I had never seen before mopping my brow, I was convinced I was dreaming.

'Colonel, she is awake,' the woman said, turning her head to address someone I couldn't see.

'Where am I, Madame? Who are you?' my jaw was aching, and I could only see out of one eye.

'You are in my house, and this is Madame Maillot. She has been taking care of you since I brought you in yesterday.'

A man appeared behind the elderly woman, behind Madame Maillot. He was tall and handsome, with a military bearing.

'Why?'

'Why did I bring you in? Because you needed help, child. And what is your name?'

'My name is Arielle Dupont, Monsieur. I am very grateful to you for your kindness.'

'Not at all. I am Colonel Xavier de Vire. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.'

It was with this stilted conversation, that felt to me like something unreal, that began a new stage in my life. If I were to go into detail about every moment of the time I spent in that house, this journal and many more like it would be filled to bursting with little anecdotes. I was there for perhaps a month, recovering from my ordeal. I had caught a slight chill in addition to my wounded eye and jaw, and Xavier - as he instructed me to call him, and I must note that at the time I did not know society and so I did not know what a great breach of etiquette this was - would not let me even consider leaving until I was well and healed. Madame Maillot nursed me, and Xavier visited every day gradually telling me more and more about his life but tactfully not questioning me.

He told me about his father's death the previous year, and his becoming the patriarch of his family. He lived primarily in one of the fashionable districts of Paris, and was nominally a Colonel in the French army. Since his father's death, however, he had become more of a career landowner than a soldier. He had been married before, but his wife had passed away in giving birth to their child, which had also died. It pained him to speak of it, but in his quest for my trust he hid no detail.

One day he came to visit me when Madame Maillot was not at home. We sat in the drawing room, in armchairs opposite each other by the fireplace, and made idle small talk, until a pained look crossed his face.

'Arielle, there is something I must say to you. I must tell you that from the moment I saw you I have loved you, and our time together has only strengthened my feelings.'

He knelt before me on the hearthrug and took my hand in his.

'Will you be my wife, Arielle Dupont?'

Looking into his bright earnest loving face, I knew I could not reciprocate his sentiment. But I also knew something else, something that could feasibly ruin me forever in the eyes of the world if I refused him. He was a good man, I reasoned, I cared for him and he would make a good husband. I loved Erik, but I believed I would never see him again. I was still only fourteen, so it would be necessary to have an engagement of two years before we could marry. I told Xavier this, but he was still willing.

It was then that I committed that crime that so many women have done to save themselves. No, not to marry a man they do not love but to take advantage of a good man and use his name for that which is not his.

'Yes, yes I will be your wife.'

He kissed me then, and I kissed him back shutting out the image of Erik and trying to believe that this was not a terrible betrayal. That day, that black day, I knew what I had to do. Using my innocence as a weapon and a lure, I seduced Xavier that night. He, poor man, wept with guilt afterwards feeling that he had taken from me that which I had in truth given Erik, and brought me into sin by doing so before we were married.

Poor man, poor dear man. It had to be done, you see, because it was this day that I knew beyond a doubt that I carried Erik's child. I knew that alone I could give the child nothing, but even the illegitimate offspring of a de Vire would never want for anything. Since I was to marry Xavier, it would all come right in the end. Yes, I told myself, as I cried myself to sleep, it would all come right in the end.