“I should think so!” returned Goupil.  “If she doesn’t marry me I’ll make her die of grief.”

“Do it, my boy, and I’ll give you the money to buy a practice in Paris.  You can then marry a rich woman—­”

“Poor Ursula! what makes you so bitter against her? what has she done to you?” asked the clerk in surprise.

“She annoys me,” said Minoret, gruffly.

“Well, wait till Monday and you shall see how I’ll rasp her,” said Goupil, studying the expression of the late post master’s face.

The next day La Bougival carried the following letter to Savinien.

“I don’t know what the dear child has written to you,” she said, “but she is almost dead this morning.”

Who, reading this letter to her lover, could fail to understand the sufferings the poor girl had gone through during the night.

My dear Savinien,—­Your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du Rouvre, and perhaps she is right.  You are placed between a life that is almost poverty-stricken and a life of opulence; between the betrothed of your heart and a wife in conformity with the demands of the world; between obedience to your mother and the fulfilment of your own choice—­for I still believe that you have chosen me.  Savinien, if you have now to make your decision I wish you to do so in absolute freedom; I give you back the promise you made to yourself—­not to me—­in a moment which can never fade from my memory, for it was, like other days that have succeeded it, of angelic purity and sweetness.  That memory will suffice me for my life.  If you should persist in your pledge to me, a dark and terrible idea would henceforth trouble my happiness.  In the midst of our privations—­which we have hitherto accepted so gayly—­you might reflect, too late, that life would have been to you a better thing had you now conformed to the laws of the world.  If you were a man to express that thought, it would be to me the sentence of an agonizing death; if you did not express it, I should watch suspiciously every cloud upon your brow.

Dear Savinien, I have preferred you to all else on earth.  I was right to do so, for my godfather, though jealous of you, used to say to me, “Love him, my child; you will certainly belong to each other one of these days.”  When I went to Paris I loved you hopelessly, and the feeling contented me.  I do not know if I can now return to it, but I shall try.  What are we, after all, at this moment?  Brother and sister.  Let us stay so.  Marry that happy girl who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish.  You will not hear of me again.  The world will approve of you; I shall never blame you—­but I shall love you ever.  Adieu, then!

“Wait,” cried the young man.  Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he scratched off hastily the following reply:—­