"I? Oh! I don't think anything about it. Why should you suppose that I think that? I can't read your heart, you see, and I have no idea whether it still entertains the same sentiments as before."
"Ah! I can safely tell you, who have always treated me like a brother; indeed, why should I make a mystery of it, anyway? Yes, I love Fanny as dearly as ever, her image has not ceased for a single day to be present in my thoughts. My love, although hopeless, has never changed. Judge, then, whether I can cease to love her, now that I am once more at liberty to anticipate happiness in the future!"
Adolphine passed her hand across her brow and made an effort to retain her self-possession, as she replied:
"Ah! it's a fine thing to love like that, with a constancy which time and absence have failed to shake! It's a fine thing; and a woman could not love you too well to recompense a passion as true and pure as yours!"
"Now, that we are alone, tell me, dear Adolphine, do you think that Fanny will receive me kindly? Do you think that my constancy will touch her? that her heart will be moved by it? Ambition and the wish to cut a figure in the world caused her to prefer Monsieur Monléard to me. I can readily forgive her, young as she was, for listening to vanity rather than love—for I fancy that she never had much love for her husband."
"Oh, no! I don't think that she had, either."
"In that case, his death cannot have caused her a very deep grief?"
"She regretted his fortune, that's all."
"What are her means now?"
"Twenty-five hundred francs a year. My father asked her to come to live with us, but she preferred to have a home of her own."