"You,—you, my own, best Madeleine, and for that I loved him. It was so wonderful, knowing how constitutionally diffident he is, to see him so courageous. And when I remembered how he used to hesitate and stammer, it seemed marvellous to hear him talk on with an ease, a fluency, a fervor truly eloquent. I never ask to listen to finer oratory. My aunt, in spite of her indignation, was confounded into silence. Count Tristan could not say a word, and Maurice looked as though amazement alone kept him from throwing himself in his friend's arms, and I fear I almost felt like doing the same."
"It was Gaston de Bois, then?" cried Madeleine, with sudden transport.
"Yes. Who else could it be? And he was so comical at the same time that he was so pathetic! At first I almost felt like laughing at his odd gesticulations. And then he talked so nobly, so grandly, that I felt like weeping; and you know it is my nature to laugh and to cry in spite of myself. I have made up my mind that I could never love anybody who could not make me do both at once, just as he did, in such a comically pathetic manner."
"How shall I thank you? Gaston de Bois is my best, my truest, friend!" said Madeleine, rapturously.
"I know that well enough! Once I feared he might be the mysterious individual whom you loved; but he said himself that you were a sister to him; and I almost leapt for joy at those words. A sister never fills the whole of a man's heart,—does she?"
"Not such a heart as Gaston de Bois'. He will tell you himself who occupies the sovereign place in that heart when he knows that he may speak."
"But how is he to know? You must promise me not to tell him, not to give him even the faintest hint, of what I have communicated. Promise me that you will not."
"I promise. But you forget how diffident M. de Bois is, how distrustful of his own merits. He will not easily believe that you can think of him. And, meantime, you"—
"Will suffer. Yes, I know it; but I should suffer more if I were guilty of an unmaidenly action. So you will keep your promise?"
"I will keep it faithfully."