“My only dear one,” said she, deadly pale and sobbing, “you are going to leave me all alone and you ask why I weep? You will say the Dauphiness is kind to me? so she is, perfect in my eyes, and I regard her as a divinity? but it is because she dwells in a superior sphere that I feel for her respect, not affection. Affection is so needful to my heart that the want of it makes it collapse. Father? Oh, heaven, I am telling you nothing new when I say that our father is not a friend or guardian to me. Sometimes he looks at me so that I am frightened. I am more afraid than ever of him since you go away. I cannot tell, but the birds know that a storm is coming when they take to flight while still it is calm?”
“What storm are you to be on your guard against? I admit that misfortune may await us. Have you some forewarning of it? Do you know whether you ought to run to meet it or flee to avoid it?”
“I do not, Philip, only that my life hangs on a thread. It seems to me that in my sleep I am rolled to the brink of a chasm, where I am awakened, too late for me to withstand the attraction which will drag me over. With you absent, and none to help me, I shall be crushed at the bottom of the chasm.”
“Dear sister, my good Andrea,” said the captain, moved despite himself by this genuine fright, “you make too much of affection for which I thank you. You lose a defender, it is true, but only for the time. I shall not be so far that I am not within call. Besides, apart from fancies, nothing threatens you.”
“Then, Philip, how is it that you, a man, feel as mournful as I do at this parting? explain this, brother?”
“It is easy, dear,” returned Philip. “We are not only brother and sister, but had a lonely life which kept us together. It is our habit to dwell in close communion and it is sad to break the chain. I am sad, but only temporarily. I do not believe in any misfortune, save our not seeing each other for some months, or it may be a year. I resign myself and say Good-bye till we meet again.”
“You are right,” she said, staying her tears, “and I am mad. See, I am smiling again. We shall meet soon again.”
She tenderly embraced him, while he regarded her with an affection which had some parental tenderness in it.
“Besides,” he said, “you will have a comfort, in our father coming here to live with you. He loves you, believe me, but it is in his own peculiar way.”
“You seem embarrassed, Philip—what is wrong?”