than a week, so quickly and
lightly the time went. The mornings, two children at play; the
afternoons, three. I suppose it was because the brother and sister were
so strangely like each other, that I grew so soon to feel Mlle. Valerie
as my friend; and she, sweet soul, took me at Yvon's word, and thought
me, perhaps, a fine fellow, and like her own people. That she never
fully learned the difference is one of the many things for which I have
to thank a gracious God.

Abby Rock told me, Melody,--in after-times, when we were much
together,--how my poor father, at sight of my mother Marie, was struck
with love as by a lightning-flash. It was a possession, she would say,
only by an angel instead of an evil spirit; at the first look, she
filled his life, and while she lived he wanted nothing else, nor indeed
after she died. It was not so with me. And perhaps it might seem strange
to some, my dear child, that I write this story of my heart for you, who
are still a slip of a growing girl, and far yet from womanhood and the
thoughts that come with it. But it may be some years before the paper
comes to you, for except my poor father, we are a long-lived race; and I
find singular comfort, now that I cannot keep myself exercised as much
as formerly, by reason of growing years, in this writing. And I trust to
say nothing that you may not with propriety hear, my dear.

When I had been a month at Chateau Claire, then, a new thing began to
come slowly upon me. From the first I had felt that this young lady was
the fairest and the sweetest creature my eyes had seen; like a drop of
morning dew on a rose, nothing less. I dwelt upon the grace of her
motions, and the way the colour melted in her cheek, as I would dwell
upon the fairest picture; and I listened to her voice because it was
sweeter than my violin, or even the note of the hermit-thrush. But
slowly I became aware of a change; and instead of merely the pleasure of
eye and ear, and the warmth at the heart that comes from true kindliness
and friendship, there would fall a trembling on me when she came or
went, and a sense of the room being empty when she was not in it. When
she was by, I wanted nothing more, or so it seemed, but just the
knowledge of it, and did not even need to look at her to see how the
light took her hair where it waved above her ear. This I take to have
been partly because the feeling that was growing up in me came not from
her beauty, or in small part only f