"Oh! as for me, yes, I think so, Tiennet, if it suits the will of God. I am all but of age, and I think I have waited so long for the wish to marry that now I have let the time go by."
"Perhaps it is only just beginning, dear. The love of amusement has gone, and the love of children has come, and I see how you are settling down to a quiet home life; but nevertheless you are still in your spring-time, like the earth whose flowers are just blooming. You know I don't flatter you, and so you may believe me when I tell you that you have never been so pretty, though you have grown rather pale—like Thérence, the girl of the woods. You have even caught a sad little look like hers, which goes very well with your plain caps and that gray gown. The fact is, I believe your inside being has changed and you are going to be a sister of charity—if you are not in love."
"Don't talk about that, my dear friend," cried Brulette. "I might have turned either to love or piety a year ago. I felt, as you say, changed within. But now, here I am, tied to the cares of life without finding either the sweetness of love or the strength of faith. It seems to me that I am tied to a yoke and can only push forward by my head, without knowing what sort of cart I am dragging behind me. You see that I am not very sad under it and that I don't mean to die of it; and yet, I own that I regret something in my life—not what has been, but what might have been."
"Come, Brulette," I said, sitting down by her and taking her hand, "perhaps the time has come for confidence. You can tell me everything without fear of my feeling grief or jealousy. I am cured of wishing for anything that you can't give me. But give me one thing, for it is my due,—give me your confidence about your troubles."
Brulette became scarlet and made an effort to speak, but could not say a word. It almost seemed as if I were forcing her to confess to her own soul, and she had foreborne so long that now she did not know how to do it.
She raised her beautiful eyes and looked at the country before us, for we were sitting at the edge of the wood, on a grassy terrace overlooking a pretty valley broken up into rolling ground green with cultivation. At our feet flowed the little river, and beyond, the ground rose rapidly under a fine wood of full-grown oaks, less extensive but boasting as large trees as any we had seen in the forest of Alleu. I saw in Brulette's eyes the thoughts she was thinking, and taking her hand, which she had withdrawn from mine to press her heart as if it pained her, I said, in a tone that was neither jest nor mischief,—
"Tell me, is it Huriel or Joseph?"
"It is not Joseph!" she replied, hastily.
"Then it is Huriel; but are you free to follow your inclinations?"
"How can I have any inclinations," she answered, blushing more and more, "for a person who has doubtless never thought of me?"