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Pauline paused in her disrobing and thought over this. And the more she thought over it, the more it appeared strange. It appeared so strange that her features assumed a look of sadness and anxiety. "What could Zulma be doing away from home to-day?" thought Pauline further. "How was it that she met the officer? What if she came purposely to see him? That would be just like Zulma.
Pauline Belmont had not been as intimate as she might have been with Zulma Sarpy, both because they had been separated for many years during the school period, and because their characters did not exactly match. The timid, retiring, essentially domestic disposition of the one could not move on the same planes with the dashing, fearless, showy mood of the other.
It was Easter Monday, a calmer day, but perhaps more enjoyable from the palpable assurance it afforded that the promises of its predecessor were really being fulfilled. The weather was magnificent, and the whole country resounded with the voices of men and women preparing for their work. Zulma Sarpy and Cary Singleton walked alone on the bank of the St. Lawrence, directly in front of the mansion.
Conspiracies deeper than that, designs of love that have rocked kingdoms to their foundation have been formed by languid beauties, recumbent in the soft recesses of their easy chairs. Zulma had reached the culminating point of her revery and was gradually gliding down the quiet declivities of reaction, when she was aroused by a great uproar in the lower part of the house.
"Of the terrible events which took place this night while we were sleeping." Zulma looked up with a movement of deep anxiety and asked: "What has happened sir?" "Two great battles have been fought." "Is it possible?" "Many killed, wounded, and prisoners." "Who, where, how?" gasped Zulma in agony. "Quebec was attacked in two places." "And captured?" demanded Zulma, unable to restrain herself.
Tell me whether you have seen Madame de Stael's Essai sur la Fiction, prefixed to Zulma, Adelaide, and Pauline the essay is excellent: I shall be curious to know whether you think as I do of Pauline. Madame de Stael calls Blenheim "a magnificent tomb: splendour without, and the deathlike silence of ennui within." She says she is very proud of having made the Duke of Marlborough speak four words.
She bent softly down, laid her head beside the marble brow upon the pillow, folded her arms around Pauline's neck, and clasped her in a long, yearning embrace. Then they communed together, almost mouth to mouth, with that miraculous sweetness which is God's divinest gift to women. Pauline revived for the occasion. She was so happy to see Zulma.
No, Mademoiselle is going to try her fortune elsewhere. Madame Connard handed the bill to Monsieur Tibulle. No, no. It is Mademoiselle who is going to settle it; this young lady. Zulma glanced at it and grew pale. She had hardly 10 francs, and the bill amounted to 19 francs, 75 centimes. And besides, it is so little because it is you.
During the period of its composition, he had fallen, perhaps for the first time in his life, sincerely in love with the woman he ultimately married; and it is appropriate to notice here the synchronism of the event with his high-water mark in fiction. As he confessed to Zulma Carraud, love was his life, his essence; he wrote best when under its influence.
But it was lost upon the gentle, unsuspicious Pauline, and Zulma, regretting the remark, immediately said: "If you had met him on your passage, he would have treated you kindly, depend upon it," and she proceeded to relate the incident of the covered bridge.
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