"No, Mademoiselle; unhappily, it but grows the stronger."
"That is folly, is it not?"
"Mademoiselle, if you will allow me to be a philosopher like Clotilde—love has no regard for sense or wisdom, else would Yorke love one of his own age, and I would love one of my own country and my own rank."
She said not a word for a long time, but sat with downcast eyes. Suddenly she lifted them, and they shone with a softer radiance than I had ever seen in them before.
"Of what were you thinking, Mademoiselle?" I said gently.
She hesitated a moment, and then like the soft sigh of a zephyr came her words:
"I was wishing you were a chevalier of France."
"And I, Mademoiselle, was wishing you were a maiden of St. Louis, as I supposed you were when I first saw you."
"I would not have been of your country, even then," she said, with delicious shyness, half looking at me, half looking away in pretty confusion.
"Not now, but you soon would be. St. Louis will belong to us some day."