CHAPTER XXV. BETWIXT THE LAST VIOLET AND THE EARLIEST ROSE.
“Do not go out to-day, brother, I want you so particularly to stay with me to-day,” said Amélie de Repentigny, with a gentle, pleading voice. “Aunt has resolved to return to Tilly to-morrow; I need your help to arrange these papers, and anyway, I want your company, brother,” added she, smiling.
Le Gardeur sat feverish, nervous, and ill after his wild night spent at the Taverne de Menut. He started and reddened as his sister's eyes rested on him. He looked through the open window like a wild animal ready to spring out of it and escape.
A raging thirst was on him, which Amélie sought to assuage by draughts of water, milk, and tea—a sisterly attention which he more than once acknowledged by kissing the loving fingers which waited upon him so tenderly.
“I cannot stay in the house, Amélie,” said he; “I shall go mad if I do! You know how it has fared with me, sweet sister! I yesterday built up a tower of glass, high as heaven, my heaven—a woman's love; to-day I am crushed under the ruins of it.”
“Say not so, brother! you were not made to be crushed by the nay of any faithless woman. Oh! why will men think more of our sex than we deserve? How few of us do deserve the devotion of a good and true man!”
“How few men would be worthy of you, sweet sister!” replied he, proudly. “Ah! had Angélique had your heart, Amélie!”
“You will be glad one day of your present sorrow, brother,” replied she. “It is bitter I know, and I feel its bitterness with you, but life with Angélique would have been infinitely harder to bear.”
He shook his head, not incredulously, but defiantly at fate. “I would have accepted it,” said he, “had I been sure life with her had been hard as millstones! My love is of the perverse kind, not to be transmuted by any furnace of fiery trial.”