"Gratitude, if you will; for I detest commonplaces," said she, casting down her fine eyes, over which their dark-fringed lids drooped with a charming expression of coquetry and timidity.
"Then, be it gratitude, Madame de Rouvigny."
"Call me Mazancy, Eulalie; anything but that detested name!" said she, shrugging her pretty shoulders.
"I shall never forget the charm of your society, or the interest your unhappy story has created in my heart," said I, pressing her hand very gently.
"Every pleasure of our life is owing to some fortuitous circumstance," she replied, looking up with a beautiful smile. "Had you not rambled heedlessly towards Boscobelle last night, without knowing why; had I not fallen asleep in the avenue, we had never known each other. 'Twas all a fatality which we could not see."
"Had I not under Providence saved you——"
"I had perished—yet what would it have mattered? I am an unfortunate creature! No one can love me, who has the right to do so——"
"Ah, madame—Eulalie," said I, kissing her hand.
"What says Marmontel?" said she, withdrawing it abruptly; "'to confess that one does not love one's husband, is almost to confess that we love another; and the person who is made the confident of such a confession, is very often the object of it, a cruel and dangerous deduction!'"
"Dared I flatter myself that such was my case!——"