“That if your father deserts you, you must fight alone.”
“Just so, and I will fight alone. Thank you for that. You restore my courage which my father crushes entirely with his extraordinary antipathy to ‘exaggeration,’” exclaimed Pepa with eager vehemence. ”If when you know what my weapons are!—It was to show you those that I brought you here. You shall see.”
In one corner of the room Leon observed an inlaid cabinet which Pepa now pointed to; it was not very large, of elegant workmanship, but evidently solidly constructed. She went up to this bureau, and opening the outer doors revealed a whole series of smaller doors, pigeon-holes and drawers. She touched a spring and a secret division flew open.
“This part of the cabinet,” she said with a smile, “is the Ark of sorrows.—Now, do you know that?”
“It is a letter of mine.”
“You wrote it to me when you were at college, preparing for the School of Mines.... Read it and meditate on what you wrote to me then: ‘That you were madly in love with me....’ You may laugh now, if you can, at your youthful folly.—Why did you not treasure up my letters as I did yours? I did not say that my love was a madness, but it filled my soul and moulded my nature, as everything does that is an eternal part of it.—And this; do you know this?”
“It is a tie-pin,” he said taking it up. “It was mine.”
“Yes—you dropped it in our house one day when you came to dinner. You were engaged then to that poor soul, but I still hoped you would not marry her.—I found it lying on the carpet and I kept it.—And these flowers?”
“They are some camellias I gave you once on your fête day—San José.”