"Your letter!" exclaimed Mariette, in heart-broken tones, "he has forgotten. Here, Louis, here is your letter."
And, as she spoke, she handed the young man the crumpled, tear-blurred fragments of the letter.
"He will deny his own writing, see if he don't," muttered Madame Lacombe, as Louis hastily put the torn pieces together. "And you will be fool enough to believe him."
"This is what I wrote, Mariette," said Louis, after he had put the letter together:
"'My Dearest Mariette:—I shall be with you again the day after you receive this letter. The short absence, from which I have suffered so much, has convinced me that it is impossible for me to live separated from you. Thank God! the day of our union is near at hand. To-morrow will be the sixth of May, and as soon as I return I shall tell my father of our intentions, and I do not doubt his consent.
"'Farewell, then, until day after to-morrow, my beloved Mariette. I love you madly, or rather wisely, for what greater wisdom could a man show than in having sought and found happiness in a love like yours.
"'Yours devotedly, Louis.
"'I write only these few lines because I shall reach Paris almost as soon as my letter, and because it is always painful to me to think that another must read what I write to you. But for that, how many things I would say to you.
Yours for ever.
"'L.'"
Mariette had listened to the letter with such profound astonishment that she had been unable to utter a word.