But Gabrielle's tears fell faster.
"Oh, Ernestine! I should die of shame if I thought that any one save you had heard this avowal—this humiliating avowal—or knew my terrible secret!"
"That you love a heedless cavalier—ha, ha, Gabrielle!"
"Do not laugh. I would to Heaven, Ernestine, that I had never met this man—that we had remained at Luneburg, as our dear father wished. And his Moina—how he loves her! He often praises her to me, and without perceiving that every word is like a death stab. Happy Moina!"
Moina! I was thunderstruck. The gentle, the pining Gabrielle loved Ian Dhu, whose chivalric heart was faithfully devoted to another. This was the source of that secret sadness which had so much astonished and alarmed us. Innocent and guileless, her heart had guarded in its pure recesses this deep love, which sprang from a gratitude to her father's brave preserver. Sincerely I pitied Gabrielle, for I knew that her love was hopeless; and a thousand little expressions of eye, changes of voice and manner, which, in my pre-occupation with Ernestine, had passed unobserved at the time, now flashed upon my memory. Dear Gabrielle! I loved her like a younger sister, and felt alike hostile and indignant at this unknown Moina, who had rendered Ian so invulnerable to her many attractions.
"Ian will go home to his own mountains—those blue mountains he talks so much of; and he will marry—yes, Ernestine," continued Gabrielle, "he will marry this Moina. He cannot love me. Oh! I fear he would rather despise me if he knew how much I loved him."
"Despise!—you, the Count of Carlstein's daughter!" said her sister, whose eyes kindled.
"He saved our dear father's life," said Gabrielle, with a sad smile; "'twas that which first opened my heart unto him. He will marry that woman—and never have one thought for me, who love him so well; my memory will pass away like the last year's leaves. I hope she is good and beautiful—for he deserves a bride who is both. Yes—yes, dear Ernestine—let us leave this place; for I long for another still more solitary, where, unseen, I may give myself up to grief, and die."
"I have met men at Vienna who did not believe that a woman could love, my poor little lamb, Gabrielle!"
"Not love? How little they knew us! And who were they?"