I said I remembered; that I was not likely to forget.

“Are you strong enough to stand in that elder brother’s place again to-night?”

“Try me and see, dear lady.”

“Not whilst you say ‘dear lady,’” she pouted. “’Twas ‘Margery’ and ‘Monsieur John’ a year agone.”

“Have it as you will; I will even call you ‘Madge’ if it pleases you better.”

“No,” she said; “that is Dick’s name for me; and—­and it is of Dick that I would speak.  You love him well, do you not, Monsieur John?”

I said I could never make her, or any woman, fully understand the bond there was between us.

“Truly?” There was the merest flavor of playful sarcasm in the uptilt of the word, but it was gone when she went on.

“Being so good a friend to Dick, then, you can advise me the better.  Tell me, if you please, must I marry him—­when—­”

“When you are free to do it?” I finished for her.  “Why should you not, my dear?”

She was pulling the threads from the lace edging of her kerchief and would not for a king’s ransom let her eyes meet mine.

“You used to say—­in that other time—­that love should go before a marriage; did you not?  Or do I remember badly?”

“You remember well.  I said it then, and I say it again at this present.  But Dick loves you well and truly, sweetheart; and you—­”

She looked up quickly with the little laugh that used to mind me of happy children at play.

“And I?—­now you will read a woman’s heart for me, Monsieur John.  Tell me; do I love him as his mistress should?”

“Nay, surely,” said I, gravely, for somehow her laugh jarred upon me, “surely that is for you to say.  But you have said it, long since.”

“Have I?” she queried, with an arch lifting of the penciled brows that came straight from her French mother.  “Mayhap you overheard me say it, Monsieur Eavesdropper?”

“God help me, little one—­so I did,” said I.

All in a flash her laughing mood was gone and she stood before me like an accusing goddess.

“You told me once the past was like a dream to you; you must have dreamed that part of it, sir.  And yet you said a little while ago that I had not failed in any wifely duty!”

“The time and circumstance were their own best excuse.  Sure I am far from blaming you, my dear.  But let it pass, ’tis enough that I know you love him as he loves you.”

Again her mood changed in the twinkling of an eye.  She sank down upon the hassock, laughing merrily.

“O wise Monsieur John! how well you read a woman’s heart!  ’Tis you should be the lover, instead of Dick.  He rides a-courting as he would charge a legion on a battle-field.  But nothing would ever tempt you to be so masterful rough, would it, Monsieur John?  You would look deep into your sweetheart’s eyes and say—­Tell me what you would say, mon ami?”

Ah, my dears, I hope no one of you will ever be tempted as I was tempted then.  I forgot my dear lad, forgot honor, forgot everything save that I had leave to tell her how I had loved her from the first; how I should go on loving her to the end.  So for a moment I hung trembling on the brink; and then she pushed me over.