sual, she received him with
evident agitation, and confessed that his delay had made her anxious.
She had become, she said, so accustomed to their daily talk, and as
there was no one else who took the least interest in her; and then she
stopped--perhaps because he too vehemently expressed his delight at
this her first kind word. He, for his part, had told her all about his
relations, and everything connected with himself that could in any way
interest her. But she had not confided to him the very slightest
particulars about her family or her past history, had only said how she
was pining in this dark shop-corner, and longed to go far away into
foreign lands. She had been putting by, she told him, for a year past
to meet travelling expenses; and privately teaching herself both French
and English in order to go into the wide-world at the first
opportunity. "If you had only seen her, Paul," said he at the end of
his narrative, "and only heard her voice, how sadly and resignedly she
told me all this, you would have pledged your life that no evil thought
had ever stirred her heart, that she was as pure and innocent as saints
and angels are said to be, and you would understand my resolve to leave
nothing undone in order to make her happy."

"You really then mean to marry her?"

"Can you doubt it? That is if she will accept me. She must have plainly
seen that my intentions were honourable, although, as to any formal
declaration, you know that my heart overflows least when it is fullest.
And besides there is no hurry. She cannot be thinking of leaving for
some time to come, and as for me--if I make great efforts in four or
five years--"

"Four or five years? Why, you will scarcely have passed your legal
examination."

"True," he rejoined. "But I have given up the idea of it. I shall not
seat myself on the long bench of law students, which is but a rickety
one after all. I think I can in a shorter time make something of music,
and at the worst if we are not able to get on here--and indeed my
parents would hardly be pleased at the marriage--we can seek our
fortune in America."

I looked at him sideways with pride and amazement. He seemed to me to
have suddenly grown ten years older, and I confessed to myself that all
the lyrical enthusiasm of my views of life, would not have rendered me
capable of so bold a plan.

"And she," I asked; "will she consent to this?"

"I do not know," he replied, looking straight before him. "