So passed the two years of Leon’s absence. When he returned, Anielka was seventeen, and had become tall and handsome. No one who had not seen her during this time, would have recognised her. Of this number was Leon. In the midst of perpetual gaiety and change, it was not possible he could have remembered a poor peasant girl; but in Anielka’s memory he had remained as a superior being, as her benefactor, as the only one who had spoken kindly to her, when poor, neglected, forlorn! When in some French romance she met with a young man of twenty, of a noble character and handsome appearance, she bestowed on him the name of Leon. The recollection of the kiss he had given her ever brought a burning blush to her cheek, and made her sigh deeply. One day Leon came to his sister’s room. Anielka was there, seated in a corner at work. Leon himself had considerably changed; from a boy he had grown into a man. “I suppose Constantia,” he said, “you have been told what a good boy I am, and with what docility I shall submit myself to the matrimonial yoke, which the Count and Countess have provided for me?” and he began whistling, and danced some steps of the Mazurka. “Perhaps you will be refused,” said Constantia coldly. “Refused! Oh, no. The old Prince has already given his consent, and as for his daughter, she is desperately in love with me. Look at these moustachios, could anything be more irresistible?” and he glanced in the glass and twirled them round his fingers; then continuing in a graver tone, he said, “To tell the sober truth, I cannot say that I reciprocate. My intended is not at all to my taste. She is nearly thirty, and so thin that whenever I look at her, I am reminded of my old tutor’s anatomical sketches. But, thanks to her Parisian dress-maker, she makes up a tolerably good figure, and looks well in a Cachemere. Of all things, you know, I wished for a wife with an imposing appearance, and I don’t care about love. I find it’s not fashionable, and only exists in the exalted imagination of poets.” “Surely people are in love with one another sometimes,” said the sister. “Sometimes,” repeated Anielka, inaudibly. The dialogue had painfully affected her, and she knew not why. Her heart beat quickly, and her face was flushed, and made her look more lovely than ever.