“If I do”—­

“You will retract your opposition.”

“My heart won’t let me; but I will despise myself, and be silent.”

And the young lady, who had dried her eyes the moment she was accused of selfishness, walked, head erect, from the room.  Josephine cast a deprecating glance at her mother.  “Yes, my angel!” said the latter, “I was harsh.  But we are no longer of one mind, and I suppose never shall be again.”

“Oh, yes, we shall.  Be patient!  Mother—­you shall not leave Beaurepaire.”

The baroness colored faintly at these four last words of her daughter, and hung her head.

Josephine saw that, and darted to her and covered her with kisses.

That day the doctor scolded them both.  “You have put your mother into a high fever,” said he; “here’s a pulse; I do wish you would be more considerate.”

The commandant did not come to dinner as usual.  The evening passed heavily; their hearts were full of uncertainty.

“We miss our merry, spirited companion,” said the baroness with a grim look at Rose.  Both young ladies assented with ludicrous eagerness.

That night Rose came and slept with Josephine, and more than once she awoke with a start and seized Josephine convulsively and held her tight.

Accused of egoism! at first her whole nature rose in arms against the charge:  but, after a while, coming as it did from so revered a person, it forced her to serious self-examination.  The poor girl said to herself, “Mamma is a shrewd woman.  Am I after all deceiving myself?  Would she be happy, and am I standing in the way?” In the morning she begged her sister to walk with her in the park, so that they might be safe from interruption.

There, she said sadly, she could not understand her own sister.  “Why are you so calm and cold, while am I in tortures of anxiety?  Have you made some resolve and not confided it to your Rose?”

“No, love,” was the reply; “I am scarce capable of a resolution; I am a mere thing that drifts.”

“Let me put it in other words, then.  How will this end?”

“I hardly know.”

“Do you mean to marry Monsieur Raynal, then? answer me that.”

“No; but I should not wonder if he were to marry me.”

“But you said ‘no.’”

“Yes, I said ‘no’ once.”

“And don’t you mean to say it again, and again, and again, till kingdom come?”

“What is the use? you heard him say he would not desist any the more, and I care too little about the matter to go on persisting, and persisting, and persisting.”

“Why not, if he goes on pestering, and pestering, and pestering?”

“Ah, he is like you, all energy, at all hours; but I have so little where my heart is unconcerned:  he seems, too, to have a wish!  I have none either way, and my conscience says ‘marry him!’”

“Your conscience say marry one man when you love another?”