With this came a flood of tears; and she leaned against a bough with her forehead on her arm, bowed like a wounded lily.

“Accursed be that man’s name, and my tongue if ever I utter it again in your hearing!” cried Rose, weeping bitterly.  “You are wiser than I, and every way better.  O my darling, dry your tears!  Here he comes:  look! riding across the park.”

“Rose,” cried Josephine, hastily, “I leave all to you.  Receive Monsieur Raynal, and decline his offer if you think proper.  It is you who love me best.  My mother would give me up for a house; for an estate, poor dear.”

“I would not give you for all the world.”

“I know it.  I trust all to you.”

“Well, but don’t go; stay and hear what I shall say.”

“Oh, no; that poor man is intolerable to me now.  Let me avoid his sight, and think of his virtues.”

Rose was left alone, mistress of her sister’s fate.  She put her head into her hands and filled with anxiety and sudden doubt.

Like a good many more of us, she had been positive so long as the decision did not rest with her.  But with power comes responsibility, with responsibility comes doubt.  Easy to be an advocate in re incerta; hard to be the judge.  And she had but a few seconds to think in; for Raynal was at hand.  The last thing in her mind before he joined her was the terrible power of that base Camille over her sister.  She despaired of curing Josephine, but a husband might.  There’s such divinity doth hedge a husband in innocent girls’ minds.

“Well, little lady,” began Raynal, “and how are you, and how is my mother-in-law that is to be—­or is not to be, as your sister pleases; and how is she? have I frightened her away?  There were two petticoats, and now there is but one.”

“She left me to answer you.”

“All the worse for me:  I am not to your taste.”

“Do not say that,” said Rose, almost hysterically.

“Oh! it is no sacrilege.  Not one in fifty likes me.”

“But I do like you, sir.”

“Then why won’t you let me have your sister?”

“I have not quite decided that you shall not have her,” faltered poor Rose.  She murmured on, “I dare say you think me very unkind, very selfish; but put yourself in my place.  I love my sister as no man can ever love her, I know:  my heart has been one flesh and one soul with hers all my life.  A stranger comes and takes her away from me as if she was I don’t know what; his portmanteau; takes her to Egypt, oh! oh! oh!”

Raynal comforted her.

“What, do you think I am such a brute as to take that delicate creature about fighting with me? why, the hot sand would choke her, to begin.  No.  You don’t take my manoeuvre.  I have no family; I try for a wife that will throw me in a mother and sister.  You will live all together the same as before, of course; only you must let me make one of you when I am at home.  And how often will that be?  Besides, I am as likely to be knocked on the head in Egypt as not; you are worrying yourself for nothing, little lady.”