"'Sieur Grandissime--"

They fell.

The lover paused.

"You thing I'm crool."

She was the statue of meekness.

"Hope has been cruel to me," replied M. Grandissime, "not you; that I
cannot say. Adieu."

He was turning.

"'Sieur Grandissime--"

She seemed to tremble.

He stood still.

"'Sieur Grandissime,"--her voice was very tender,--"wad you' horry?"

There was a great silence.

"'Sieur Grandissime, you know--teg a chair."

He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant repassed the
door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in English--having
such hazardous things to say. It would conceal possible stammerings.

"'Sieur Grandissime--you know dad riz'n I--"

She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was still.

"I have no right to ask the reason," said M. Grandissime. "It is
yours--not mine."

Her head went lower.

"Well, you know,"--she drooped it meditatively to one side, with her
eyes on the floor,--"'tis bick-ause--'tis bick-ause I thing in a few
days I'm goin' to die."

M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed.

She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume, but her
eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of half-soliloquy:

"I 'ave so mudge troub' wit dad hawt."

She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and sighed
softly, with a dying languor.

M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the street
below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a gilded Mars
was driving into battle, a soft note told the half-hour. The lady
spoke again.

"Id mague"--she sighed once more--"so strange,--sometime' I thing I'm
git'n' crezzy."

Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made remained as
silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after another pause,
with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the fair speaker resumed
with more energy, as befitting the approach to an incredible climax:

"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime,--id mague me fo'gid my hage! I thing I'm
young!"

She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his own
squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she went
on speaking:

"An' w'en someboddie git'n' ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n' to fill
ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me to gid
marri'd wid 'im--I thing 'e's in love to me." Her fingers kept up a
little shuffling with the fan. "I thing I'm c