hen Gaston was here--secretly--in September of last year--we were
married."

She said it calmly, but with an undertone of the deepest and serenest
joy; and rising, and once more wearing that look of happy exultation
which had been hers, she added:

"I am Gaston Cheverny's wife. Ought I not to be the happiest creature
on earth?"

I rose, too, and kissed her on the brow, the cheek and the hand, with
the greatest reverence. When I could speak, which was not at once, I
said, with the deepest sincerity:

"Nothing could be better than for you to have Gaston Cheverny for a
husband. Knowing him, my heart rejoices for you--not only for what you
have gained, but for what you have escaped. Ah, Francezka"--I used her
name without knowing it at the time--"when I remembered the horde of
fortune-hunters who surrounded you--when I thought that you might give
the treasure of your love to some man who would make merchandise of
it--my heart grew cold within me. But Gaston Cheverny would take you
in your smock--that I know."

"I know it, too," she answered, with a gleam of her old laughing
spirit. "All that I fear for the future is Gaston's supersensitiveness
about my fortune--but that I hope I have wit enough to manage. I shall
never make him anything but simple in his tastes. He thinks my
fondness for luxury childish, and he will endure it good-humoredly,
but I know him well enough to understand that he is a soldier and is
as superior to luxury as Cato himself."

"Tell me all," I said.

We seated ourselves, and Francezka told me, with many eloquent
pauses, with smiles, with shining eyes, with blushes, her short love
story.

"It was in September of last year that one day I sat where I am
sitting with the volume of Petrarch, out of which Gaston had often
read to me, upon my lap. I was thinking of Gaston at that moment--yes,
thinking of him and longing for him. And more, I will affirm, that I
have never seriously thought of any other man but Gaston since that
night at the prison of the Temple. Babache, I have loved him ever
since I loved you!" She said this with such an air of innocent
devotion--Francezka might change, but she could not cease to be
Francezka; and she had this way of saying sweet things to all whom she
loved. "And as I read, I yearned so for Gaston, that I spoke his name
aloud twice, and then, as if in answer to it, I looked up, and Gaston
was sitting on the bench beside me. Perhaps, like the rest of the
Kirkpatr