“Babache,” she said, “I made Gaston promise that he would keep from every human being the secret between us—and I confess, in the agitation of parting, I overlooked my good Babache—but I can not keep anything concealed from you, when your kind eyes are fixed upon me. When Gaston was here—secretly—in September of last year—we were married.”
She said it calmly, but with an undertone of the 258 deepest and serenest joy; and rising, and once more wearing that look of happy exultation which had been hers, she added:
“I am Gaston Cheverny’s wife. Ought I not to be the happiest creature on earth?”
I rose, too, and kissed her on the brow, the cheek and the hand, with the greatest reverence. When I could speak, which was not at once, I said, with the deepest sincerity:
“Nothing could be better than for you to have Gaston Cheverny for a husband. Knowing him, my heart rejoices for you—not only for what you have gained, but for what you have escaped. Ah, Francezka”—I used her name without knowing it at the time—“when I remembered the horde of fortune-hunters who surrounded you—when I thought that you might give the treasure of your love to some man who would make merchandise of it—my heart grew cold within me. But Gaston Cheverny would take you in your smock—that I know.”
“I know it, too,” she answered, with a gleam of her old laughing spirit. “All that I fear for the future is Gaston’s supersensitiveness about my fortune—but that I hope I have wit enough to manage. I shall never make him anything but simple in his tastes. He thinks my fondness for luxury childish, and he will endure it good-humoredly, but I know him well enough to understand that he is a soldier and is as superior to luxury as Cato himself.”
“Tell me all,” I said.
We seated ourselves, and Francezka told me, with 259 many eloquent pauses, with smiles, with shining eyes, with blushes, her short love story.
“It was in September of last year that one day I sat where I am sitting with the volume of Petrarch, out of which Gaston had often read to me, upon my lap. I was thinking of Gaston at that moment—yes, thinking of him and longing for him. And more, I will affirm, that I have never seriously thought of any other man but Gaston since that night at the prison of the Temple. Babache, I have loved him ever since I loved you!” She said this with such an air of innocent devotion—Francezka might change, but she could not cease to be Francezka; and she had this way of saying sweet things to all whom she loved. “And as I read, I yearned so for Gaston, that I spoke his name aloud twice, and then, as if in answer to it, I looked up, and Gaston was sitting on the bench beside me. Perhaps, like the rest of the Kirkpatricks, I am superstitious, for I was afraid it was what my aunt calls a ‘wraith,’ and I trembled and caught his hands, thinking he would melt away into the air. Now you are laughing, Babache, but remember, I am not incredulous like you French—I am Scotch and Spanish—”
“But Gaston did not melt away. He grasped your hands—and—”