'Yes, mademoiselle.'
'Ah, show me the likeness, monsieur,' she entreated; so Charlie gave her the case. 'How sweet, how lovely she looks! Do let me kiss her! Monsieur Pierrepont, I congratulate you. And when are you to be married?'
'Alas!' muttered Charlie, as his countenance fell.
'Surely she loves you?' asked Célandine, with her blue eyes dilated.
'Loves me?—dearly! so each of us has one secret of the heart to treasure.'
'What have I?' asked the girl, demurely.
'You have Adolphe.'
'Ah!—yes; M. Adolphe loves me, I believe, and—and perhaps I may learn to love him in time. I am not sure. I may marry some one else, and learn to love that some one. Mon père will arrange all that for me, and it will be so kind of him.'
Charlie looked puzzled; but ere long, in the case of Célandine herself, he was to see how matrimonial matters are arranged in the land of the silver lilies.
Her question, 'When are you to be married?' opened up no new train of thought to Charlie; that important when had been a source of frequent and painful surmise; but a new idea was ever before him now.