arcely
noticed. She deemed it impossible that she could be asked to sacrifice
her own beautiful and blessed happiness, to a cold-blooded calculation,
an artificial family intrigue; and so, with all the enthusiasm of a
first love, she swore rather to perish than to forego her lover.

"But Duroc has no fortune and no future to offer you," said Josephine.
"What he is, he is only through the friendship of Bonaparte. He has no
estate, no importance, no celebrity. Were Bonaparte to abandon him he
would fall back into nothingness and obscurity again."

Hortense replied, smiling through her tears: "I love him, and have no
other ambition than to be his wife."

"But he? Do you think that he too has no other ambition than to become
your husband? Do you think that he loves you for your own sake alone?"

"I know it," said the young girl, with beaming eyes; "Duroc has told me
that he loved me, and me only. He has sworn eternal fidelity and love to
me. Both of us ask for nothing more than to belong to each other."

Josephine shrugged her shoulders almost compassionately.

"Suppose," she rejoined, "that I were to affirm that Duroc is willing to
marry you, only because he is ambitious, and thinks that Bonaparte would
then advance him the more rapidly?"

"It is a slander--it is impossible!" exclaimed Hortense, glowing with
honest indignation; "Duroc loves me, and his noble soul is far from all
selfish calculation."

"And if I were to prove the contrary to you?" asked Josephine, irritated
by her daughter's resistance, and made cruel by her alarm for her
own fortunes.

Hortense turned pale, and her face, which had been so animated, so
beautiful, a moment before, blanched as though the icy chill of death
had passed over it.

"If you can prove to me," she said, in a hollow tone, "that Duroc loves
me only through ambitious motives, I am ready to give him up, and marry
whom you will."

Josephine triumphed. "Duroc gets back to-day from his journey," she
replied, "and in three days more I will give you the proof that he does
not love you, but the family alliance which you present."

Hortense had heard only the first of her mother's words: "Duroc returns
to-day." What cared she for all the rest? She should see him again--she
should read consolation and love's assurance in his handsome manly face;
not that she needed this to confirm her confidence, for she believed in
him, and not the shadow of a doubt obscured her blissful greeting.