“I understand,” quoth she, frankly; “and I will not play at cross-purposes with you. If this young man really loves his art, and his art alone, as he pretends, could he do better than reward me—as you call it—for my assistance? The word has a cruel signification, but you did not mean it unkindly.” I looked at her wan, sallow countenance, that had begun for some days to wear an expression of painful anxiety. At that moment I saw over a hedge—but she could not—Claude and Marie walking in a neighboring field, and pausing now and then to bend their heads very close together in admiration of some very common flower. “Poor old maid,” thought I, “you will have no reward save the consciousness of your own pure intentions.” The minute development of this drama without dramatic scenes would, perhaps, be more instructive than any elaborate analysis of human passions in general; but it would require a volume, and I can only here give a mere summary. Nathalie, in whom alone I felt particularly interested, soon found that she had deceived herself as to the nature of her sentiments for Claude—that instead of regarding him with almost maternal solicitude, she loved him with an intensity that is the peculiar characteristic of passions awakened late in life, when the common consolation is inadmissible—“after all, I may find better.” This was her last, her only chance of a happiness which she had declared to me she had never dreamed of, but which in reality she had only declined because it did not present itself to her under all the conditions required by her refined and sensitive mind. Claude, who was an excellent fellow, but incapable of comprehending her or sacrificing himself, never swerved from grateful deference to her; but I could observe, that as the state of her feelings became more apparent, he took greater care to mark the character of his sentiments for her, and to insist with some affectation on the depth of his filial affection. Nathalie’s eyes were often red with tears—a fact which Claude did not choose, perhaps, to notice, for fear of an explanation. Marie, on the contrary, became more blooming every day, while her eloquent eyes were still more assiduously bent upon the ground. It was evident to me that she and Claude understood one another perfectly well.