She bent down her head very low, and, seated beside her, I went on. My conscience tells me that I concealed nothing, that I laid my whole heart before her. But that which seemed to strike her most, was the gentle, tender love of poor Louise.
When I ended the tale with the dear girl’s death, she seemed to have forgotten herself altogether, and gazing up in my face, with the look of a pitying angel, she said, “Poor, poor Louise! How you must have loved her!”
The blood rushed up into my cheeks, and I bent down my face as if to avoid her gaze, murmuring what was perhaps too true, “Not as much as she deserved!”
Mariette started, and I added rapidly, “Do not mistake me, dear girl, I loved her well, very well—I never loved but one better. But I loved her not with that passionate earnestness—with that deep, intense, all absorbing affection which such devotion as hers well merited. I could have seen Louise wedded to another without despair, or agony, or death. I bore her father’s rejection of me with easy, patient fortitude; and I could have put my hand to any act that would have made her happy. Oh, Mariette, let poets, and fiction-writers say what they will, to render mortal love as intense as it may be, there must be a grain of mortal selfishness in it. Passion must be blended with affection; and I have learned—learned from another, that in true love there can be no happiness, no peace, no tranquillity, no life without the loved one.”
She shook like an aspen; but her lips murmured, “From whom?”
“You,” I answered.
“Oh, Louis, Louis,” she said, “are we not both wronging her who is gone?”
“Both!” that word was sufficient; but I would not hurt her feelings by catching at it as eagerly as my heart prompted. I took her hand gently, and quietly in mine, and said in a low lone, “No, Mariette—no, dearest girl. I can never wrong her by telling you the truth. I have concealed nothing from you, my Mariette—I have not concealed from you my deep affection for her, my tenderness—my care of her— my bitter sorrow for her death. Why should I conceal any thing else from you?—why should I not tell the truth in all as well as in a part? Why should I hide from you, that though for a few short days I have been the husband of another, that though she had my esteem, my strong regard, my tenderest pity, my warm affection in a certain sense, I have never truly, really loved but you, from boyhood up to manhood—from my earliest memories to this present hour? Why should I not say to you, that I have always thought of you, dreamed of you, looked for you, longed for you? Believe me, dear Mariette, believe me! If you do not, how can I prove it to you?”
She laid her hand gently upon mine, and looking up at me with a spring-day face, with bright tears and saddened smiles, she said, “The book and the violet—do not, do not, dear Louis, think me so selfish as to be jealous in the least degree of your love for poor Louise. We will often talk of her, and when we are very, very happy ourselves, as I am sure we shall be, we will think of her, and mourning for her sad and early fate, will feel our spirits chastened, and not drain the cup of happiness too eagerly.”
I would have given worlds to have been in some dim, secluded place, where I might have thrown my arms around her, and pressed her to my heart, and told her all I felt; but I dared do no more than clasp her hand in mine in mute confirmation of the pledge her words implied. She was mine: I was hers forever. But we were very silent for nearly a quarter of an hour, and then, with our senses somewhat more collected, and our hearts more still, we began to speak of all that was to follow. I told her that on the ensuing day I should tell her father what had passed between us, and I asked, somewhat anxiously, if she thought his consent would be easily obtained.