t to-day, as
you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
marry, yes, in a few months' time one of the keenest pangs of
regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
did? We embraced each other; 'like lovers,' said we. We solemnly
promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
Victor d'Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my
wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's
gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
which I had shrouded myself, was the last outbu