"I, too, can speak with perfect frankness now, my dear Mario. My father, when we went to Bourges the last time, four years ago, had the strange idea of affiancing us to each other. Your father rejected, as he was bound to do, the suggestion of so ill-assorted a union; and I, a little humiliated by my poor father's thoughtlessness, informed you several times of marriage projects, to which I gave but slight consideration in the melancholy situation in which I then was. At the same time I was cold to you in words, my dear Mario, and perhaps somewhat humiliated by the thought of the presumption which you would naturally attribute to me. Let us smile to-day at all that past misery, and do me the justice to believe that I do not entertain the slightest thought of marriage. I am twenty-three years old; my time has gone by. My party is crushed, and my fortune will be confiscated whenever it suits the Prince de Condé's caprice. My poor father is dead, stripped by the hazard of war of the property he had amassed in his maritime expeditions. So I am neither rich nor beautiful nor young. I have but one cause of rejoicing: it is that I can live hereafter not far from you, without being suspected of aspiring to anything except your friendship." Mario listened, trembling and bewildered. "Lauriane," he said impetuously, "you show your disdain of my name, my youth and my heart when you speak of the tranquil bond of friendship which it would be easy for you to resume. But it is for me to say: It is too late. I have always loved you reverently, and I do not think that my love is any less reverent because I have loved you more passionately since I lost you and since I have found you again. I, too, Lauriane, have suffered keenly! But I have never despaired altogether. When I had carefully concealed my grief, in order not to allow myself to languish and die, God sent me, in His merciful compassion, gusts of hope in Him and of faith in you. "'She knows, she must know that it would kill me,' I would say to myself; 'she will love me, she will not love another, because of her kindness of heart if for no other reason! I am only a child, but I can soon and very quickly make myself worthy of her, by working hard, by keeping my heart pure, by having courage, by making them happy who will love me, and by fighting gallantly when there comes a righteous war': for this one is righteous, is it not, Lauriane, and your heart cannot be so changed that you love the Spaniards to-day?" "No, surely not!" she replied. "And it was because Monsieur de Rohan insisted upon this mad, disgraceful and desperate alliance that I awaited the result of events here, and took no deeper interest in them."