But with this torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of loving, but the fear of her daughter.  This is a world that allows nothing without its obverse and reverse.  Strange differences are often seen between the two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom, and on the other, Stepfather.

Then, all this torture to be hidden under smiles!  Worse still, when by and by Messieurs Agoussou, Assonquer, Danny and others had been appealed to and a Providence boundless in tender compassion had answered in their stead, she and her lover had simultaneously discovered each other’s identity only to find that he was a Montague to her Capulet.  And the source of her agony must be hidden, and falsely attributed to the rent deficiency and their unprotected lives.  Its true nature must be concealed even from Clotilde.  What a secret—­for what a spirit—­to keep from what a companion!—­a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might be, gall to Clotilde.  She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all alone—­alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the lions and tigers.  She wished she had told the secret when it was small and had let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde’s knowledge day by day.  At first it had been but a garland, then it had become a chain, now it was a ball and chain; and it was oh! and oh! if Clotilde would only fall in love herself!  How that would simplify matters!  More than twice or thrice she had tried to reveal her overstrained heart in broken sections; but on her approach to the very outer confines of the matter, Clotilde had always behaved so strangely, so nervously, in short, so beyond Aurora’s comprehension, that she invariably failed to make any revelation.

And now, here in the very central darkness of this cloud of troubles, comes in Clotilde, throws herself upon the defiant little bosom so full of hidden suffering, and weeps tears of innocent confession that in a moment lay the dust of half of Aurora’s perplexities.  Strange world!  The tears of the orphan making the widow weep for joy, if she only dared.

The pair sat down opposite each other at their little dinner-table.  They had a fixed hour for dinner.  It is well to have a fixed hour; it is in the direction of system.  Even if you have not the dinner, there is the hour.  Alphonsina was not in perfect harmony with this fixed-hour idea.  It was Aurora’s belief, often expressed in hungry moments with the laugh of a vexed Creole lady (a laugh worthy of study), that on the day when dinner should really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would drop dead of apoplexy and she of fright.  She said it to-day, shutting her arms down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised, and dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its perch.  Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a certain desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and which suited the hither-thither movement of her conflicting feelings.  This is why she had wished for dinner.