to receive
letters from him! But this silence--this love and this silence are
killing me. I cannot bear it. I feel like a lost child who hears its
mother's voice in the darkness, but does not know how to follow that
voice to the refuge it bespeaks."

"Time was when daughters found it sufficient to know that their parents
disapproved of an act, without inquiring into their reasons for it. Your
father has told you that the marquis is not eligible as a husband for
you, and he expects this to content you. Have I the right to say more
than he?"

"Not the right, perhaps, mamma. I do not appeal to your sense of right,
but to your love. I am very unhappy. My whole life's peace is trembling
in the balance. You ought to see it--you do see it--yet you let me
suffer without giving me one reason why I should do so."

The mother's voice was still.

"You see!" the daughter went on again, after what seemed like a moment
of helpless waiting. "Though my arms are about you, and my cheek
pressed close to yours, you will not speak. Do you wonder that I am
heart-broken--that I feel like turning my face to the wall and never
looking up again?"

"I wonder at nothing."

Was that madame's voice? What boundless misery! what unfathomable
passion! what hopeless despair!

"If he were unworthy!" her daughter here exclaimed.

"It you could point to anything he lacks. But he has wealth, a noble
name, a face so handsome that I have seen both you and papa look at him
in admiration; and as for his mind and attainments, are they not
superior to those of all the young men who have ever visited us? Mamma,
mamma, you are so good that you require perfection in a son-in-law. But
is he not as near it as a man may be? Tell me, darling, for in my dreams
he always seems so."

I heard the answer, though it came slowly and with apparent effort.

"The marquis is an admirable young man, but we have another suitor in
mind whose cause we more favor. We wish you to marry Armand Thierry."

"A shop-keeper and a revolutionist! Oh, mamma!"

"That is why we brought you away. That is why you are here--that you
might have opportunity to bethink yourself, and learn that the parents'
views in these matters are the truest ones, and that where we make
choice, there you must plight your troth. I assure you that our reasons
are good ones, if we do not give them. It is not from tyranny--"

Here the set, strained voice stopped, and a sudden movement in the room
beyond s