Charlie had Ernestine's photo, done and coloured at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was one which, so far as these sun pictures go, represented her to the life, and he had seen her in that particular posé, and with that expression on her soft face, many, many times. He kept it beneath his pillow. Never did he tire of gazing on it; thus, more than once, his active little nurse caught him with the blue velvet case in his hand.
'Ah! It is monsieur's mother?' said she, trying to get a peep at it.
'It is not,' said Charlie, with a fond smile.
'A sister, then? I have seen that it is a lady!'
'No, Célandine.'
'Something as dear as both would be?'
'I cannot say.'
'How so, monsieur?'
'I scarcely ever saw my mother. And when I left home to soldier in Prussia, my sisters were mere children; but dear she is, indeed.'
'Ah,—a fiancée?' said Célandine, laughing and clapping her hands.