“And are you then so very happy?” asked she, with a pleasant smile.
“Can you doubt it? or rather is it that, as the emotion does not extend to yourself, you do doubt it?”
“Oh, as for me,” cried she, joyfully, “it is very different. I have never travelled till now—seen nothing, actually nothing. The veriest commonplaces of the road, the peasants' costumes, their wayside cottages, the little shrines they kneel at, are all objects of picturesque interest to me, and I am ready to exclaim at each moment, 'Oh! why cannot we stop here? shall we ever see anything so beautiful again as this?'”
“And hearing you talk thus, you can ask me am I so very happy!” said I, reproachfully.
“What I meant was, is it not stupid to have no companion of your own turn of mind, none with whom you could talk, without condescending to a tone beneath you, just as certain stories are reduced to words of one syllable for little children?”
“Mademoiselle is given to sarcasm, I see,” said I, half peevishly.
“Nothing of the kind,” said she, blushing slightly. “It was in perfect good faith. I wished you a more suitable companion. Indeed, after what I had heard from his Excellency about you, I was terrified at the thought of my own insufficiency.”
“And pray what did he say of me?” asked I, in a flutter of delight.
“Are you very fond of flattery?”
“Immensely!”