"Indeed, it is!" replied Eugenie de Menancourt, turning towards her with a warm smile. "Your company, your affection, your sympathy, dear Beatrice, have been my only consolations since I came within the walls of this hateful city; and all I wish is that I could on some points make you think as I do. I wish it selfishly, and yet for your sake, Beatrice; for, if I could succeed, I should not tremble every moment for your happiness and for your peace, as I do now." "Thank you, thank you for the wish, dear friend!" replied Beatrice, with more melancholy than mirth in her smile; "thank you, most sincerely, for the wish! but still it is in vain. You can never, with all your kind eloquence, make a wild, ardent, passionate Italian girl, a calm, gentle, yielding being like yourself, all charity and half Huguenot. It is in vain, it is in vain. But you speak of happiness, Eugenie, as if I knew what happiness is. Now listen to me, and you shall hear more of Beatrice of Ferrara than ever you have yet done. There is a subject, I know, on which we have both thought often, and on which we have wished often to speak--I know it, Eugenie! I know it! I have heard it in half-spoken words; I have read it in your manner, and in your tone; I have seen it in your eyes--that, often, often, when we have talked of other scenes and other days, you have longed to ask what is Beatrice of Ferrara to Philip d'Aubin, and what is he to her? Nay, I dream not that you love him, Eugenie; I know better--I know that you love him not; and I feel that Philip d'Aubin, with all his splendid qualities, with all his energies of mind, and graces of person, is the last man on earth that Eugenie de Menancourt could love." She paused a moment, gazed thoughtfully in her friend's face, and then, leaning her head upon Eugenie's shoulder, while she took her hand in hers, she added, in a low tone and with a deep sigh--"But it is not so with Beatrice of Ferrara!"