it had been but a garland, then it had become a chain, now
it was a ball and chain; and it was oh! and oh! if Clotilde would only
fall in love herself! How that would simplify matters! More than twice
or thrice she had tried to reveal her overstrained heart in broken
sections; but on her approach to the very outer confines of the matter,
Clotilde had always behaved so strangely, so nervously, in short, so
beyond Aurora's comprehension, that she invariably failed to make any
revelation.

And now, here in the very central darkness of this cloud of troubles,
comes in Clotilde, throws herself upon the defiant little bosom so full
of hidden suffering, and weeps tears of innocent confession that in a
moment lay the dust of half of Aurora's perplexities. Strange world! The
tears of the orphan making the widow weep for joy, if she only dared.

The pair sat down opposite each other at their little dinner-table. They
had a fixed hour for dinner. It is well to have a fixed hour; it is in
the direction of system. Even if you have not the dinner, there is the
hour. Alphonsina was not in perfect harmony with this fixed-hour idea.
It was Aurora's belief, often expressed in hungry moments with the laugh
of a vexed Creole lady (a laugh worthy of study), that on the day when
dinner should really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would
drop dead of apoplexy and she of fright. She said it to-day, shutting
her arms down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised,
and dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its
perch. Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a certain
desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and which suited
the hither-thither movement of her conflicting feelings. This is why she
had wished for dinner.

Boiled shrimps, rice, claret-and-water, bread--they were dining well the
day before execution. Dining is hardly correct, either, for Clotilde, at
least, did not eat; they only sat. Clotilde had, too, if not her
unknown, at least her unconfessed emotions. Aurora's were tossed by the
waves, hers were sunken beneath them. Aurora had a faith that the rent
would be paid--a faith which was only a vapor, but a vapor gilded by the
sun--that is, by Apollo, or, to be still more explicit, by Honore
Grandissime. Clotilde, deprived of this confidence, had tried to raise
means wherewith to meet the dread obligation, or, rather, had tried to
try and had failed. To-day was the