y.

"Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have yours."

"Then you really were thinking of your secrets?" he went on, laughing.

"No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know."

"But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine," cried the young man,
softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's hand and drawing it through
his arm.

After walking a few steps they found themselves under a clump of trees
which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a haze of red and brown.
This touch of natural magic lent a certain solemnity to the moment. The
young man's free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing of his
surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm, stirred her
to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it was produced
by the simplest and most innocent circumstances. The restraint under
which the young girls of the upper class live gives incredible force to
any explosion of feeling, and to meet an impassioned lover is one of
the greatest dangers they can encounter. Never had Emilie and Maximilien
allowed their eyes to say so much that they dared never speak. Carried
a way by this intoxication, they easily forgot the petty stipulations
of pride, and the cold hesitancies of suspicion. At first, indeed, they
could only express themselves by a pressure of hands which interpreted
their happy thoughts.

After slowing pacing a few steps in long silence, Mademoiselle de
Fontaine spoke. "Monsieur, I have a question to ask you," she said
trembling, and in an agitated voice. "But, remember, I beg, that it is
in a manner compulsory on me, from the rather singular position I am in
with regard to my family."

A pause, terrible to Emilie, followed these sentences, which she had
almost stammered out. During the minute while it lasted, the girl,
haughty as she was, dared not meet the flashing eye of the man she
loved, for she was secretly conscious of the meanness of the next words
she added: "Are you of noble birth?"

As soon as the words were spoken she wished herself at the bottom of a
lake.

"Mademoiselle," Longueville gravely replied, and his face assumed a sort
of stern dignity, "I promise to answer you truly as soon as you shall
have answered in all sincerity a question I will put to you!"--He
released her arm, and the girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he
said: "What is your object in questioning me as to my birth?"

She stood motionless, cold, and speechless.

"Mademoi