“Is she all this perfection?” he asked himself. “Has she become serious and religious? Does she tend schools, and visit the poor? Is she kind to her mother and brother? Yes, I am sure of that, I have seen her.” And walking with his old tutor over his little parish, and going to visit his school, it was with inexpressible delight that Pen found Blanche seated instructing the children, and fancied to himself how patient she must be, how good-natured, how ingenuous, how really simple in her tastes, and unspoiled by the world.
“And do you really like the country?” he asked her, as they walked together.
“I should like never to see that odious city again. O Arthur—that is, Mr.—well, Arthur, then—one’s good thoughts grow up in these sweet woods and calm solitudes, like those flowers which won’t bloom in London, you know. The gardener comes and changes our balconies once a week. I don’t think I shall bear to look London in the face again—its odious, smoky, brazen face! But, heigho!”
“Why that sigh, Blanche?”
“Never mind why.”
“Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me everything.”
“I wish you hadn’t come down;” and a second edition of ‘Mes Soupirs’ came out.
“You don’t want me, Blanche?”
“I don’t want you to go away. I don’t think this house will be very happy without you, and that’s why I wish that you never had come.”
‘Mes Soupirs’ were here laid aside, and ‘Mes Larmes’ had begun.