"But you are so young! Ah, I see, you are in love!"
"It may be so," said I again, with a furtive glance at Jacqueline, near whom I was kneeling, and who grew pale as her aunt spoke.
"With some one far away?"
"Do not press me, madame; suffice that it is a mad and almost hopeless love—hopeless as regards its future," said I, bitterly, while Jacqueline gave me a secret and imploring glance. "I love, madam, how dearly and how deeply, is known only to Heaven and myself. There—that is my secret—that my hidden sorrow and joy—joy for the delight it gives me, and sorrow for its future."
The face of Jacqueline beamed with pleasure, and her eyes sparkled as she bent her flushed face over her needlework.
"I would that M. Jacquot would speak thus of me," said Angelique, "I shall pull his ears some day, till he does so."
The old lady politely asked pardon of me for her curiosity, and was proceeding to detail some of her own early experiences and to rehearse the number of Counts, Abbés, Chevaliers, and Grand Crosses of St. Louis, who had sighed and died for her, when a servant suddenly announced the Chevalier de Boisguiller; then we heard the clank of a sabre with the jingle of spurs, and that gay hussar in his brilliant uniform, all gold braid and bell buttons, with his fur cap in one hand, and the other caressing his dearly cherished moustache, entered, bowing and smiling to us all.
He was en route, he said, with his troop, from Rennes to the coast, and as he would pass near St. Malo, he had galloped on in front to pay his respects at the chateau, and obtain the honour of conveying any message for his father, the commandant, from the Countess Ninon—one who far excelled the Ninon of the preceding age.
There was mischief lurking in the handsome fellow's eyes as he said all this. He soon detected an impudent smile on the lips of Angelique, and, ere long, I found him eyeing me sharply through his glass, and I felt a horrible dread lest he should recognise me, or discover my sex.
I was certain the crisis had come, when the hussar captain said—