"I'd set him adrift," was Pauline's reply, spoken without the least pretence of caution.
"Hush!" said her husband; but that was because he was the jailer. He laughed outright close on this admonition, and asked Elizabeth if she expected him to make a frame for this picture to hang opposite Chalons.
"No," she answered, "I am going to take it with me."
"Where now?" asked the parents in one breath.
"Oh, home,—Chalons."
This reply seemed to merit some consideration, by the way the eyes of Adolphus and Pauline regarded their child. They did not understand her;—her meaning was deeper than her utterance.
"To Chalons?" repeated Adolphus, quietly.
"Home?" said Pauline;—it was almost the sweetest word she knew, almost the easiest of utterance.
"You have promised me a hundred times that I should go. Did you mean it? May I go? You wish me to see the old place and the old people. But the old place is changing, and the old people are dying. Soon, if I go to Chalons, it will not be your Chalons I shall see."
Dumb with wonder, Adolphus and Pauline looked at one another. To be sure, they had done their best in order to excite in the breast of Elizabeth such love of country as was worthy of their child, and such curiosity about locality as would constrain her to cherish some reverent regard for the place of their birth, the home of their youthful love; but never had they imagined the possibility of her projecting a pilgrimage in that direction, except under their guidance. They could hardly imagine it now. Often they had talked over every step of that journey they would one day make together; the progress was as familiar to Elizabeth as it could be made by the description of another; but that they had succeeded in so awaking the feeling of their child, that she should seriously propose making the pilgrimage alone, passed their comprehension.