ad nursed
her with the devotion of girlhood, and the curiosity of an untainted
imagination. In the silence of long nights the sisters exchanged many a
confidence. With what dramatic interest was poor Bettina invested in the
eyes of the innocent Modeste? Bettina knew love through sorrow only, and
she was dying of it. Among young girls every man, scoundrel though he
be, is still a lover. Passion is the one thing absolutely real in the
things of life, and it insists on its supremacy. Charles d'Estourny,
gambler, criminal, and debauchee, remained in the memory of the
sisters, the elegant Parisian of the fetes of Havre, the admired of the
womenkind. Bettina believed she had carried him off from the coquettish
Madame Vilquin, and to Modeste he was her sister's happy lover. Such
adoration in young girls is stronger than all social condemnations. To
Bettina's thinking, justice had been deceived; if not, how could it
have sentenced a man who had loved her for six months?--loved her to
distraction in the hidden retreat to which he had taken her,--that he
might, we may add, be at liberty to go his own way. Thus the dying girl
inoculated her sister with love. Together they talked of the great drama
which imagination enhances; and Bettina carried with her to the grave
her sister's ignorance, leaving her, if not informed, at least thirsting
for information.

Nevertheless, remorse had set its fangs too sharply in Bettina's heart
not to force her to warn her sister. In the midst of her own confessions
she had preached duty and implicit obedience to Modeste. On the evening
of her death she implored her to remember the tears that soaked her
pillow, and not to imitate a conduct which even suffering could not
expiate. Bettina accused herself of bringing a curse upon the family,
and died in despair at being unable to obtain her father's pardon.
Notwithstanding the consolations which the ministers of religion,
touched by her repentance, freely gave her, she cried in heartrending
tones with her latest breath: "Oh father! father!" "Never give your
heart without your hand," she said to Modeste an hour before she died;
"and above all, accept no attentions from any man without telling
everything to papa and mamma."

These words, so earnest in their practical meaning, uttered in the hour
of death, had more effect upon Modeste than if Bettina had exacted a
solemn oath. The dying girl, farseeing as prophet, drew from beneath her
pillow a ring whic