"You are dreadfully hard upon me, Miss Adair, but it is no use to talk of forgetting. I love Marie, and shall ever love her, truly!"
"Then act like a man gifted with a free will," answered Flora, as she entered the hotel.
Flora and Marie slept in the same room, so, before going to bed, the former heard a tearful confession of love and sorrow from poor gentle little Marie. The wretched weakness of her lover's conduct seemed to have no effect upon her, although to Flora it appeared despicable, and she thought to herself, "Such an one would not do for me; he whom I shall love must be strong and great, even in his faults. He must be one of whom I could say
'He was a man, take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again.'
However, it must be my work now to comfort poor Mignonne."
She endeavoured to rouse her by talking of her dear papa, Monsieur de St. Severan; of how grieved he would be if she were to return to him after so many years, looking pale and melancholy, when he expected to see her in the bloom of youth and happiness; and urged her, for his sake—and for all their sakes—to struggle against this, her first experience of love's trials.
At length Marie said—speaking French, as she invariably did when very earnest, but we will give the substance in the vernacular—"Yes, Flora, I know it is very wrong to grieve so, to repine at what I suppose God sees is good for me. I know that I ought to be content to be unhappy if He wills it, but it is very hard at first, Flora...."
"Hard? Oh how hard, first or last! But you bear it like a saint, Mignonne! I could not bear it as you do; it would be a hard struggle with me to submit to the power which deprived me of the person I loved best, even before I had known the bliss of being his companion."
"Ah! It is very nice to be happy," murmured Marie through her tears, "but, if le bon Dieu sees that it is better for us not to be so, we ought to be satisfied, ought we not?"