"'Yes,' said Silvain, in a tone of deepest sadness, 'what was love between us is turned to hate. Ask me no more questions--in pity!'
"'But one, Silvain. Have you any children?'
"'None. The babe that Avicia will soon press to her breast will be our first-born.'
"To matters upon which I saw he was then unwilling to converse, I made no further reference. He engaged a light cart and horse, and a man to drive them to the village by the sea. Then he woke Avicia, and I said farewell to them, and gazed after them till they were out of sight.
"As he had promised, I received from him before the end of the week a statement of his adventures. It is now among my papers in Nerac, and I remember perfectly all the salient particulars necessary to my story, which is now drawing to a conclusion. I will narrate them in my own way, asking you to recall the day upon which the brothers were last seen in the village by the sea."
[XV.]
"Silvain, Kristel, and Avicia, accompanied by her father, rowed from the lighthouse to the shore. The villagers saw but little of them; they passed out of the village, and Avicia's father returned alone to the lighthouse. Kristel loved Avicia with all the passion of a hot, imperious, and intense nature. He looked upon her as his, and had he suspected that Silvain would have fallen in love with her, it can readily be understood that he would have been the last man to bring them into association with each other. But so it happened.
"When Kristel and Avicia met in the Tyrol, Kristel was buoyed up with hopes that she reciprocated the love she had inspired in his breast. He had some reason for this hope, for at his request, when he asked her to become his wife and said that he could not marry without his father's consent, she had written home to her father with respect to the young gentleman's proposal, thereby leading him to believe that she was ready to accept him. It appeared, however, that there was no real depth in her feelings for him; and, indeed, it may be pardoned her if she supposed that his fervid protestations were prompted by feelings as light and as little genuine as her own. Unsophisticated as she was in the ways of the world, the fact of his making the honourable accomplishment of his love for her dependent upon the fiat of another person could not but have lessened the value of his declarations--more especially when she had not truly given him her heart. It was given to Silvain upon the occasion of their first meeting, and it was not long before they found the opportunity to exchange vows of affection--a circumstance of which I and every person but themselves were entirely ignorant. But love is cunning.
"It was because of Avicia's fear of her father that this love was kept secret; he held her completely in control, and--first favouring Kristel and then Silvain, playing them against each other, as it were, to his own advantage in the way of gifts--filled her with apprehension.
"'Looking back,' Silvain said in his statement to me, 'upon the history of those days of happiness and torture, I can see now that I was wrong in not endeavouring to arrive at a frank understanding with my brother; but indeed I had but one thought--Avicia. As Kristel believed her to be his, so did I believe her to be mine, and the idea of losing her was sufficient to make my life a life of despair. And after all, it was for Avicia to decide. Absorbing as was my love for her, I should have had no choice but to retire and pass my days in misery had she decided in favour of Kristel.'