"Oh, I want none in the world but thee, my brother--but thee, but thee! and, oh God! am _I_ not enough for thee? Bare earth with my brother were all heaven for me; but all my life, all my full soul, contents not my brother." Pierre spoke not; he but listened; a terrible, burning curiosity was in him, that made him as heartless. But still all that she had said thus far was ambiguous. "Had I known--had I but known it before! Oh bitterly cruel to reveal it now. That _she_! That _she_!" She raised herself suddenly, and almost fiercely confronted him. "Either thou hast told thy secret, or she is not worthy the commonest love of man! Speak Pierre,--which?" "The secret is still a secret, Isabel." "Then is she worthless, Pierre, whoever she be--foolishly, madly fond!--Doth not the world know me for thy wife?--She shall not come! 'Twere a foul blot on thee and me. She shall not come! One look from me shall murder her, Pierre!" "This is madness, Isabel. Look: now reason with me. Did I not before opening the letter, say to thee, that doubtless it was from some pretty young aunt or cousin?" "Speak quick!--a cousin?" "A cousin, Isabel." "Yet, yet, that is not wholly out of the degree, I have heard. Tell me more, and quicker! more! more!" "A very strange cousin, Isabel; almost a nun in her notions. Hearing of our mysterious exile, she, without knowing the cause, hath yet as mysteriously vowed herself ours--not so much mine, Isabel, as ours, _ours_--to serve _us_; and by some sweet heavenly fancying, to guide us and guard us here." "Then, possibly, it may be all very well, Pierre, my brother--my _brother_--I can say that now?" "Any,--all words are thine, Isabel; words and worlds with all their containings, shall be slaves to thee, Isabel." She looked eagerly and inquiringly at him; then dropped her eyes, and touched his hand; then gazed again. "Speak so more to me, Pierre! Thou art my brother; art thou not my brother?--But tell me now more of--her; it is all newness, and utter strangeness to me, Pierre." "I have said, my sweetest sister, that she has this wild, nun-like notion in her. She is willful in it; in this letter she vows she must and will come, and nothing on earth shall stay her. Do not have any sisterly jealousy, then, my sister. Thou wilt find her a most gentle, unobtrusive, ministering girl, Isabel. She will never name the not-to-be-named things to thee; nor hint of them; because she knows them not. Still, without knowing the secret, she yet hath the vague, unspecializing sensation of the secret--the mystical presentiment, somehow, of the secret. And her divineness hath drowned all womanly curiosity in her; so that she desires not, in any way, to verify the presentiment; content with the vague presentiment only; for in that, she thinks, the heavenly summons to come to us, lies;--even there, in that, Isabel. Dost thou now comprehend me?"