“One word,” continued Claire,—­“one single word, would have enlightened me.  Why did you not pronounce it!  It was with such happiness that I leant on you as a child on its mother; and with what inward joy I said to myself, ’I am sure of one friend, of one heart into which runs the overflow of mine!’ Ah! why was not my confidence greater?  Why did I withhold my secret from you?  I might have avoided this fearful calamity.  I ought to have told you long since.  I no longer belong to myself freely and with happiness, I have given my life to another.”

To hover in the clouds, and suddenly to fall rudely to the earth, such was M. Daburon’s fate; his sufferings are not to be described.

“Far better to have spoken,” answered he; “yet no.  I owe to your silence, Claire, six months of delicious illusions, six months of enchanting dreams.  This shall be my share of life’s happiness.”

The last beams of closing day still enabled the magistrate to see Mademoiselle d’Arlange.  Her beautiful face had the whiteness and the immobility of marble.  Heavy tears rolled silently down her cheeks.  It seemed to M. Daburon that he was beholding the frightful spectacle of a weeping statue.

“You love another,” said he at length, “another!  And your grandmother does not know it.  Claire, you can only have chosen a man worthy of your love.  How is it the marchioness does not receive him?”

“There are certain obstacles,” murmured Claire, “obstacles which perhaps we may never be able to remove; but a girl like me can love but once.  She marries him she loves, or she belongs to heaven!”

“Certain obstacles!” said M. Daburon in a hollow voice.  “You love a man, he knows it, and he is stopped by obstacles?”

“I am poor,” answered Mademoiselle d’Arlange, “and his family is immensely rich.  His father is cruel, inexorable.”

“His father,” cried the magistrate, with a bitterness he did not dream of hiding, “his father, his family, and that withholds him!  You are poor, he is rich, and that stops him!  And yet he knows you love him!  Ah! why am I not in his place? and why have I not the entire universe against me?  What sacrifice can compare with love? such as I understand it.  Nay, would it be a sacrifice?  That which appears most so, is it not really an immense joy?  To suffer, to struggle, to wait, to hope always, to devote oneself entirely to another; that is my idea of love.”

“It is thus I love,” said Claire with simplicity.

This answer crushed the magistrate.  He could understand it.  He knew that for him there was no hope; but he felt a terrible enjoyment in torturing himself, and proving his misfortune by intense suffering.

“But,” insisted he, “how have you known him, spoken to him?  Where?  When?  Madame d’Arlange receives no one.”

“I ought now to tell you everything, sir,” answered Claire proudly.  “I have known him for a long time.  It was at the house of one of my grandmother’s friends, who is a cousin of his,—­old Mademoiselle Goello, that I saw him for the first time.  There we spoke to each other; there we meet each other now.”