Nevertheless, there were times when Eusebie was almost beautiful. It was when any strong emotion flushed her cheeks and fired her eyes. The West Indian party did not go much into society. The health of Señora Eleanor forbade their doing so. The only company they saw was our party from Louisiana. The illness of the mother and the negligence of the nurse, threw the little Gloria very much upon the care of Eusebie, who was almost always to be found in Madame de Crespigney’s circle. Thus it happened that Eusebie and Marcel were brought daily together, and united by their common interest in the beautiful child, Gloria. So Eusebie, the pale, agueish girl, fell in love with the handsome young Marcel—fell in love with him, not after the manner of the soft-hearted girl, who sighed in secret and slipped out of sight, but after the manner of the woman who says to herself, “Love or death,” and thinks towards her victim, “Your love or your life!” Marcel de Crespigney being of a tender, affectionate, sympathetic nature, had been more or less in love all the days of his youth. In earliest infancy he was ardently in love with his nurse. At five years old he was passionately enamored of his nursery governess, a bright young Yankee girl. And when she married the Methodist minister, Marcel wept tears of agony. His Sunday-school teacher, an amiable old maid, was his next flame. When she died of yellow fever he put crape on his little cap and flowers on her grave. Then followed, as queens of his soul—his sisters’ music mistress, his mother’s seamstress, and the overseer’s sister-in-law. At the age of fifteen he actually offered marriage to the doctor’s widow, a genial, soft-eyed, warm-hearted matron of thirty-five, who, in her wisdom and goodness, refrained from wounding his affection by contempt, but gravely and kindly assured him that, though she declined to be engaged then, yet she would wait for him, and if he should be in the same mind five years from that time, she would listen to him. The boy left her, in ecstasies of hope and happiness, after vows of unchanging, eternal fidelity. But he did not remain in the same mind, which was fortunate, as the doctor’s widow also died, and—of yellow fever. At the age of seventeen, when the young man entered West Point, as we have said, he would have speedily contracted a pure, platonic love for the colonel’s wife, a handsome and intellectual lady of middle age, only a high sense of honor warned him of the danger of such moral quicksands. After this the boy devoted himself to his military studies, and the sentiment of spoonyism soon gave place to the sentiment of heroism. Yes, Marcel de Crespigney had been in love nearly all his life; but he was neither vain enough nor observant enough to perceive the preference bestowed on him by his young lady friends; nor would he ever have known the infatuation of Eusebie La Compte, had not his mother discovered and revealed it to him.