“My husband!” she whispered in return.
Rose came out, and found them billing and cooing. “You MUST not be so happy, you two,” said she authoritatively.
“How can we help it?” asked Camille.
“You must and shall help it, somehow,” retorted this little tyrant. “Mamma suspects. She has given me such a cross-examination, my blood runs cold. No, on second thoughts, kiss her again, and you may both be as happy as you like; for I am going to tell mamma all, and no power on earth shall hinder me.”
“Rose,” said Camille, “you are a sensible girl; and I always said so.”
But Josephine was horrified. “What! tell my mother that within a month of my husband’s death?”—
“Don’t say your husband,” put in Camille wincing; “the priest never confirmed that union; words spoken before a magistrate do not make a marriage in the sight of Heaven.”
Josephine cut him short. “Amongst honorable men and women all oaths are alike sacred: and Heaven’s eye is in a magistrate’s room as in a church. A daughter of Beaurepaire gave her hand to him, and called herself his wife. Therefore, she was his wife: and is his widow. She owes him everything; the house you are all living in among the rest. She ought to be proud of her brief connection with that pure, heroic spirit, and, when she is so little noble as to disown him, then say that gratitude and justice have no longer a place among mankind.”
“Come into the chapel,” said Camille, with a voice that showed he was hurt.
They entered the chapel, and there they saw something that thoroughly surprised them: a marble monument to the memory of Raynal. It leaned at present against the wall below the place prepared to receive it. The inscription, short, but emphatic, and full of feeling, told of the battles he had fought in, including the last fatal skirmish, and his marriage with the heiress of Beaurepaire; and, in a few soldier-like words, the uprightness, simplicity, and generosity of his character.