“Now, would you not have been sorry if I had not made you come?” said Vincent.
“If we could only stay—stay here for ever!” she exclaimed, leaning back against the bush under which they sat. “Here, amidst the whispering of the winds and the dash of the waters, you would listen no more for the roll of the drum, or the booming of cannon at Saint Marc. I am weary of our life at Pongaudin.”
“Weary of rumour of wars, before we have the wars themselves, love.”
“We can never hear anything of my brothers while we are on these terms with France. Day after day comes on—day after day, and we have to toil, and plan, and be anxious; and our guests grow tired, and nothing is done; and we know that we can hear nothing of what we most want to learn. I am certain that my mother spends her nights in tears for her boys; and nothing is so likely to rouse poor Génifrède as the prospect of their coming back to us.”
“And you yourself, Aimée, cannot be happy without Isaac.”
“I never tried,” said she. “I have daily felt his loss, because I wished never to cease to feel it.”
“He is happier than you, dearest Aimée.”
“Do not tell me that men feel such separations less than women; for I know it well already. I can never have been so necessary to him as he is to me; I know that well.”
“Say ‘was,’ my Aimée. The time comes when sisters find their brothers less necessary to them than they have been.”
“Such a time has never come to me, and I believe it never will. No one can ever be to me what Isaac has been.”