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Canalis talked on, displaying the warmth of his fancy and all his graces, for Modeste's benefit, as he spoke of love, marriage, and the adoration of women, until Monsieur Mignon, who had rejoined them, seized the opportunity of a slight pause to take his daughter's arm and lead her up to Ernest de La Briere, whom he had been advising to seek an open explanation with her.
In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe confidant. The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were crowded with Modeste's pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy with this tender and dreamy spirit.
By dint of reflecting on his position as an unfortunate and despised lover, Ernest went through something of the same process as Modeste's first letter had forced upon him. Though sorrow is said to develop virtue, it only develops it in virtuous persons; that cleaning-out of the conscience takes place only in persons who are by nature clean.
Nevertheless, this drama of a poor seduced sister returning to die under a roof of elegant poverty, the failure of her father, the baseness of her betrothed, the blindness of her mother caused by grief, had touched the surface only of Modeste's life, by which alone the Dumays and the Latournelles judged her; for no devotion of friends can take the place of a mother's eye.
The day on which it caught her eye one of Arthez's best books happened to be published. We are compelled to admit, though it may be to Modeste's injury, that she hesitated long between the illustrious poet and the illustrious prose-writer. Which of these celebrated men was free? that was the question.
Modeste's arrival at Rosembray made a certain sensation in the avenue when the carriage with the liveries of France came in sight, accompanied by the grand equerry, the colonel, Canalis, and La Briere on horseback, preceded by an outrider in full dress, and followed by six servants, among whom were the Negroes and the mulatto, and the britzka of the colonel for the two waiting-women and the luggage.
Truly modest minds, like that of Ernest de La Briere, but especially those who, knowing their own value, also know that they are neither loved nor appreciated, can understand the infinite joy to which the young secretary abandoned himself on reading Modeste's letter.
She had seen him in one moment turn against herself. No! no one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her. She could hardly breathe.
"Who is it you mean?" asked Modeste, coloring. "The man of fixed principles and sound moralities," said her father, slyly, repeating the words which had dissolved poor Modeste's dream on the day after his return. "I was not even thinking of him, papa. Please leave me at liberty to refuse the duke myself; I understand him, and I know how to soothe him." "Then your choice is not made?"
The entrance to the Chalet is by a little trellised iron door, the uprights of which, ending in lance-heads, show for a few inches above the fence and its hedge. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in taking care of this hot-house, whose exotic treasures were one of Modeste's joys.
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