"Then," said Marie, "if I love Margaret, I shall want _her_ to be happy. I shall not want her to make me happy, unless it would make her so." "Right, my child," said Bruno, with a smile of approbation. "To do otherwise would be loving Marie, not Margaret." "But, Father!" exclaimed Eva. "Do you mean to say that if my betrothed prefers to go hawking rather than sit with me, if I love him I shall wish him to leave me?" "Whom wouldst thou be loving, if not?" "I could not wish him to go and leave me!" "My child, there is a divine self-abnegation to which very few attain. But those few come nearest to the imitation of Him who `pleased not Himself,' and I think--God knoweth--often they are the happiest. Let us all ask God for grace to reach it. `This is My commandment, that ye have love one to another.'" And, as was generally the case when he had said all he thought necessary at the moment, Bruno rose, and with a benediction quitted the room. "Call that loving!" said Eva, contemptuously, when he was gone. "Poor tame stuff! I should not thank you for it." "Well, I should," said Doucebelle, quietly. "Oh, thou!" was Eva's answer, in the same tone. "Why, thou hast no heart to begin with." Doucebelle silently doubted that statement. "O Eva, for shame!" said Marie. "Doucebelle always does what every body wants her, unless she thinks it is wrong." "Thou dost not call that love, I hope?" "I think it is quite as like it as wishing people to do what they don't want, to please you," said Marie, sturdily. "I don't believe one of you knows any thing about it," loftily returned Eva. "If I had been Margaret, now, I could not have sat quietly to that broidery. I could not have borne it!" Margaret looked up quickly, changed colour, and with a slight compression of her lower lip, went back to her work in silence. "But what wouldst thou have done, Eva?" demanded the practical little Marie. "Wouldst thou have stared out of the window all day long?" "No!" returned Eva with fervent emphasis. "I should have wept my life away. But Margaret is not like me. She can get interested in work and other things, and forget a hapless love, and outlive it. It would kill me in a month." Margaret rose very quietly, put her frame by in the corner, and left the room. Beatrice, who had been silent for some time, looked up then with expressive eyes. "It is killing her, Eva. My father told me so a week since. He says he is quite sure that the Countess is mistaken in fancying that she is getting over it." "She! She is as strong as a horse. And I don't think she ever felt it much! Not as I should have done. I should have taken the veil that very day. Earth would have been a dreary waste to me from that instant. I could not have borne to see a man again. However many years I might have lived, no sound but the _Miserere_--" "But, Eva! I thought thou wert going to die in a month."