y should I say 'no?' you will make one another happy some day: you
are both so good. Any other man but you would tear her from me; but you
are too just, too kind. Heaven will reward you. No! I will. I will give
you Josephine: ah, my dear brother-in-law, it is the most precious thing
I have to give in the world."

"Thank you, then. So that is settled. Hum! no, it is not quite; I
forgot; I have something for you to read; an anonymous letter. I got it
this morning; it says your sister has a lover."

The letter ran to this tune: a friend who had observed the commandant's
frequent visits at Beaurepaire wrote to warn him against traps. Both
the young ladies of Beaurepaire were doubtless at the new proprietor's
service to pick and choose from. But for all that each of them had a
lover, and though these lovers had their orders to keep out of the way
till monsieur should be hooked, he might be sure that if he married
either, the man of her heart would come on the scene soon after, perhaps
be present at the wedding.

In short, it was one of those poisoned arrows a coarse vindictive coward
can shoot.

It was the first anonymous letter Rose had ever seen. It almost drove
her mad on the spot. Raynal was sorry he had let her see it.

She turned red and white by turns, and gasped for breath.

"Why am I not a man?--why don't I wear a sword? I would pass it through
this caitiff's heart. The cowardly slave!--the fiend! for who but a
fiend could slander an angel like my Josephine? Hooked? Oh! she will
never marry you if she sees this."

"Then don't let her see it: and why take it to heart like that? I don't
trust to the word of a man who owns that his story is a thing he dares
not sign his name to; at all events, I shall not put his word against
yours. But it is best to understand one another in time. I am a plain
man, but not a soft one. I should not be an easygoing husband like some
I see about: I'd have no wasps round my honey; if my wife took a lover I
would not lecture THE WOMAN--what is the use?--I'd kill THE MAN then and
there, in-doors or out, as I would kill a snake. If she took another,
I'd send him after the first, and so on till one killed me."

"And serve the wretches right."

"Yes; but for my own sake I don't choose to marry a woman that loves any
other man. So tell me the plain truth; come."

Rose turned chill in her inside. "I have no lover," she stammered. "I
have a young fool that comes and teases me: but it i