"They are watching us."

"They cannot hear us," he replied.

"True; but they see us."

"Let us sit down, Charlotte," replied Calyste, gently taking her hand.

"Is it true that your banner used formerly to float from that twisted
column?" asked Charlotte, with a sense that the house was already hers;
how comfortable she should be there! what a happy sort of life! "You
will make some changes inside the house, won't you, Calyste?" she said.

"I shall not have time, my dear Charlotte," said the young man, taking
her hands and kissing them. "I am going now to tell you my secret. I
love too well a person whom you have seen, and who loves me, to be able
to make the happiness of any other woman; though I know that from our
childhood you and I have been destined for each other by our friends."

"But she is married, Calyste."

"I shall wait," replied the young man.

"And I, too," said Charlotte, her eyes filling with tears. "You
cannot long love a woman like that, who, they say, has gone off with a
singer--"

"Marry, my dear Charlotte," said Calyste, interrupting her. "With the
fortune your aunt intends to give you, which is enormous for Brittany,
you can choose some better man than I. You could marry a titled man.
I have brought you here, not to tell you what you already knew, but
to entreat you, in the name of our childish friendship, to take this
rupture upon yourself, and say that you have rejected me. Say that you
do not wish to marry a man whose heart is not free; and thus I shall be
spared at least the sense that I have done you public wrong. You do not
know, Charlotte, how heavy a burden life now is to me. I cannot bear the
slightest struggle; I am weakened like a man whose vital spark is gone,
whose soul has left him. If it were not for the grief I should cause my
mother, I would have flung myself before now into the sea; I have not
returned to the rocks at Croisic since the day that temptation became
almost irresistible. Do not speak of this to any one. Good-bye,
Charlotte."

He took the young girl's head and kissed her hair; then he left the
garden by the postern-gate and fled to Les Touches, where he stayed near
Camille till past midnight. On returning home, at one in the morning, he
found his mother awaiting him with her worsted-work. He entered softly,
clasped her hand in his, and said,--

"Is Charlotte gone?"

"She goes to-morrow, with her aunt, in despair, both of them," answered
the baroness. "C