"Love you, Louise!" cried Joliette. "I would lay down my life for you!"
"Are you quite sure you love me for myself and not because of the resemblance you say I bear to the woman you once so ardently admired? What was her name?—ah! Eugénie Danglars!" said she, looking at him with a piercing gaze.
"Quite sure, Louise, quite sure. Besides, Mlle. Danglars has disappeared, has not been seen or heard of for several years, and, no doubt, is dead."
"And yet you do not mourn for her! How strange!"
"I never loved her as I love you, Louise. Eugénie Danglars was a capricious and eccentric girl, and had she lived would have been a capricious and eccentric woman. It was well for me she vanished when she did! But, by the way, another singular and inexplicable coincidence is that Louise d'Armilly, the name you bear, was also the name of Mlle. Danglars' music teacher. I cannot understand it at all!"
"There is no necessity for you to understand it. Anyhow, it is a coincidence, as you say—nothing more."
"Well, Louise, let us speak no further about either the resemblance or the coincidence. Suffice it that I love you, and you alone—that I love you for yourself."
"Your words make me very happy, Albert," replied Mlle. d'Armilly, and her full red lips looked so luscious, ripe and alluring, that Joliette could not resist the temptation to bestow a long, burning kiss upon them.
"Be my wife, then, dearest Louise," cried the Captain, "and I will prolong your happiness until death shall strike me down!"