ty of royalist claimed the
danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde
the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the
salon the count said: "Guess whom I bring you?--Felix!"

"Is it possible!" she said, with pendant arms and a bewildered face.

I showed myself and we both remained motionless; she in her armchair, I
on the threshold of the door; looking at each other with that hunger
of the soul which endeavors to make up in a single glance for the lost
months. Then, recovering from a surprise which left her heart unveiled,
she rose and I went up to her.

"I have prayed for your safety," she said, giving me her hand to kiss.

She asked news of her father; then she guessed my weariness and went
to prepare my room, while the count gave me something to eat, for I was
dying of hunger. My room was the one above hers, her aunt's room; she
requested the count to take me there, after setting her foot on the
first step of the staircase, deliberating no doubt whether to accompany
me; I turned my head, she blushed, bade me sleep well, and went away.
When I came down to dinner I heard for the first time of the disasters
at Waterloo, the flight of Napoleon, the march of the Allies to Paris,
and the probable return of the Bourbons. These events were all in all to
the count; to us they were nothing. What think you was the great event
I was to learn, after kissing the children?--for I will not dwell on the
alarm I felt at seeing the countess pale and shrunken; I knew the injury
I might do by showing it and was careful to express only joy at seeing
her. But the great event for us was told in the words, "You shall have
ice to-day!" She had often fretted the year before that the water was
not cold enough for me, who, never drinking anything else, liked it
iced. God knows how many entreaties it had cost her to get an ice-house
built. You know better than any one that a word, a look, an inflection
of the voice, a trifling attention, suffices for love; love's noblest
privilege is to prove itself by love. Well, her words, her look, her
pleasure, showed me her feelings, as I had formerly shown her mine by
that first game of backgammon. These ingenuous proofs of her affection
were many; on the seventh day after my arrival she recovered her
freshness, she sparkled with health and youth and happiness; my lily
expanded in beauty just as the treasures of my heart increased. Only in
petty minds or