"I will have courage for both of us. I will remind you of oaths formerly so binding with you, and which even the very violence of your love ought not to make you forget. Pray, De Morville, be yourself. You allude to fresh sorrows; what are they? Is your mother in worse health?" "What if she were?" "Oh! for mercy's sake do not talk thus. Believe me, a woman may be proud to see her influence for a moment superior to the noblest principles; but that is on condition that these principles resume their ascendancy. I should hate myself and you, if, instead of that generous heart which I have so proudly loved, I found now only a selfish and exclusive one. Would that be the proper fruit of our love?" De Morville shook his head sorrowfully. "Alas! I fear," he said, in a gloomy tone, "I have no longer strength to resist the current which sweeps me along. Nothing of all that I formerly venerated is now strong enough to arrest my course. Your love before every thing! Perish all else!" "Happily I have the courage you lack." "Oh, you do not love me?" "Not love you? But let us not talk of that at this moment, and tell me under what excitement you were when you wrote me the note which so much alarmed me, and has brought me hither this evening?" "Not knowing how else to address you, I relied on the fidelity of your young companion; and besides, the billet was incomprehensible to all but you. Had it fallen into M. de Hansfeld's hands it could not have compromised you." "I recognised in this your usual tact; but the cause of this note?" "Your calmness makes me ashamed of myself. I, too, have courage; and I feel my obligation to you for recalling me to myself. Well, then, this it is which has now overwhelmed me. Yesterday my mother sent for me,— she was weaker, and suffering more than usual. I hardly dare to think that for some time past I have been less attentive to her." "Ah! you do not know the pain you give me to hear you speak thus." "She told me, after some hesitation, that she felt her strength exhausted; and that she knew she could not long survive. She expected from me a fresh proof of my submission to her wishes; it would make her last moment's tranquil. I begged her to explain, and she spoke to me of one of our most intimate connexions, whom she named to me, one of our oldest friends, who had a charming and accomplished daughter." "I see it all," said Madame de Hansfeld, with firmness; "for heaven's sake, proceed."