"Stop, Hilda, I conjure you," cried Fleurange in an agitated manner.
"Listen to me," resumed Fleurange, at length, in a calmer tone. "As it is your wish, let us speak of him. I consent. Let us speak of him this time, but never again. Tell me," she continued with a sad smile, "can you make me his equal in wealth and rank? Or deprive him of his nobility and make him as poor as I? In either case, especially in the latter," she cried, with a tenderness in her tone, and a look she could not repress--"ah! nothing, certainly nothing but his will, could separate me from him! But it is reasonable to suppose the sun will rise upon us to-morrow and find us the same as to-day: we no longer live in the time of fairies, when extraordinary metamorphoses took place to smooth away difficulties and second the wishes of poor mortals. Help me then, Hilda, I beseech you, to forget him, to live, and even recover from the wound, by never speaking to me either of him, or myself!--"
Hilda silently pressed her in her arms for a long time, and then said: "I will obey you, Gabrielle, and never mention his name till you speak of him first."
The summer and autumn both passed away without anything new, except some variations in the professor's slow recovery, and an occasional gleam of happiness for Clement--the revival of a spark of his buried hopes--but such moments were rare, and succeeded by a sad reaction; nevertheless, they were sweet and lived long in his memory.
One day in particular was thus graven on his heart--a fine day in October, when he had the pleasure of rowing Hilda and his cousin to a shady point further up on the river, which gracefully winds nearly around it. There they spent several hours, conversing together with the delightful familiarity of intimacy, and now and then reading some favorite passage in the books they brought with them. As he sat listening to the silvery tones of Fleurange's voice, and met her expressive, sympathetic glance when he took the book in his turn and read nearly as well as herself; as he sat thus near her in that lovely, solitary spot, with no other witness but her whose affection for both seemed only an additional tie, hope once more entered his heart, as one breaks into a dwelling fastened against him, but, alas! to be promptly thrust out, leaving him as desolate as before.