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"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?" "Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. "You love some one younger, happier than I?" "No, M. Lenoble, no one." "But you have loved? Yes! a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who " A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see.
I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I have my own reasons for staying unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I shall stay." "Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?" "Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Diana was the first to speak.
She had really taught herself to believe that the demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her future sister-in-law. The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble and Cydalise. The two women were curious nay, indeed, somewhat anxious.
Will your sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?" "I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to marry M. Lenoble?
Already she was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow also, for whose return she looked daily. For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a home.
On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his plighted wife. "MY DEAR GUSTAVE, I regret to find from your letter that the doctors consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care.
I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell before her marriage with M. Lenoble. Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? Before her marriage with M. Lenoble! Those words appear under my eyes in the writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!"
"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently. "Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow it always ended in happiness."
Diana murmured wonderingly. "What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale proud face shall poor Lenoble of Cotenoir put down his heart. Do you know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour yonder?
His fellow-students were bent on a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble.
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