ward me--as you call it--for my
assistance? The word has a cruel signification, but you did not mean it
unkindly."

I looked at her wan, sallow countenance, that had begun for some days to
wear an expression of painful anxiety. At that moment I saw over a
hedge--but she could not--Claude and Marie walking in a neighboring field,
and pausing now and then to bend their heads very close together in
admiration of some very common flower. "Poor old maid," thought I, "you
will have no reward save the consciousness of your own pure intentions."

The minute development of this drama without dramatic scenes would perhaps
be more instructive than any elaborate analysis of human passions in
general; but it would require a volume, and I can only here give a mere
summary. Nathalie, in whom alone I felt particularly interested, soon
found that, she had deceived herself as to the nature of her sentiments
for Claude--that instead of regarding him with almost maternal solicitude,
she loved him with an intensity that is the peculiar characteristic of
passions awakened late in life, when the common consolation is
inadmissible--"after all, I may find better." This was her last, her only
chance of a happiness, which she had declared to me she had never dreamed
of, but which in reality she had only declined because it did not present
itself to her under all the conditions required by her refined and
sensitive mind. Claude, who was an excellent fellow, but incapable of
comprehending her or sacrificing himself, never swerved from grateful
deference to her; but I could observe, that as the state of her feelings
became more apparent, he took greater care to mark the character of his
sentiments for her, and to insist with some affectation on the depth of
his filial affection. Nathalie's eyes were often red with tears--a fact
which Claude did not choose perhaps to notice, for fear of an explanation.
Marie, on the contrary, became more blooming every day, while her eloquent
eyes were still more assiduously bent upon the ground. It was evident to
me that she and Claude understood one another perfectly well.

At length the same thing became evident to Nathalie. How the revelation
was made to her I do not know; but sudden it must have been, for I met her
one day in the poplar-field, walking hurriedly along with an extraordinary
expression of despair in her countenance. I know not why, but the thought
at once occurred to me that the Rhone ran rapid an