“I told her at table that I wished to see her particularly this evening.”

“Perhaps she did not understand you.”

“Oh yes, she did.  You would not let her come?” with a sudden lighting up of the expressive face.

“I did not forbid her coming:  I did not know that you were waiting for her.”

Then with sudden boyish candor and a happy smile on his animated countenance “I thought you might have observed that I come here so often because I like to talk with Miss St. Clair.  But you never can know how dearly I love her.”

“I am sorry.”

“Why?” with a naive surprise.

“She is older than you.”

“How old is she?”

“She will be twenty in May.”

“And I am nineteen this very week.  What is one poor little year?—­not a year,” gleefully.

“But the difference in religion?”

“An obstacle, I grant, but not an insuperable one.  My uncle married an English lady, a Protestant, and they have been very happy together.”

“But I think there is another man,” I stammered, surprised at finding my outposts carried so easily.

“You do not mean to say that she is compromised with any man?” almost fiercely.

“I do not know what meaning you attach to that word,” for the count’s imperfect French was not always intelligible.  “There is a young man, the son of a neighbor, who has admired her a long time.”

“Oh, he admires her?” with a curl of the exquisite lips, as if to say, “Who does not?”

“But I think she may like him a little.”

“Why do you torture me so?  Tell me at once that they are betrothed,” cried he, pale with concentrated anger.

He thought she had trifled with him, I knew instantly, but quietly said, “I cannot tell you exactly in what relation they stand to each other, but I think Miss St. Clair would if she found an opportunity to speak with you.”

“You do not know how I have tried to make opportunities.  I go everywhere, hoping to see you, and I have never met you—­not once.  Won’t you ask her to come down to-night?” coaxingly, like a child.

“Not to-night:  it is too late.”

“I must see Miss St. Clair to-night.”

“Impossible.”

“I must see Miss St. Clair.  Find out for me when I can see her.  I will go with you,” in a white heat of passion. (We had been alone for some little time.)

I took the arm which he held out, not a little agitated by the excess of emotion which thrilled and quivered through his youthful frame, as he hurried me up the broad stone staircase and along the wide corridors that led to our rooms.  What business had I to meddle?  How should an old fogy like me know anything of the love-affairs of this generation?  The girl would have managed more wisely than I, I reflected, by no means jubilant over the result.

“Wait here;” and I walked on to Miss St. Clair’s door, opened it, and there sat Helen in her pretty white wrapper, bathed in the moonlight, serene as a star, as if there were no passionate young heart breaking in waves of anguish at her feet.  “Helen, the count is in the corridor, and he will not go till I have told him when you will see him.”