Fleurange left the room, unperceived as she supposed, but Hilda, who had been carefully observing her all the evening, followed her, determined to obtain a complete avowal of all that was passing in her heart. She softly entered her cousin’s chamber. Fleurange was not expecting her. She had thrown herself on a chair, with her face buried in her hands, in an attitude expressive at once of dejection and grief. Hilda approached and threw her arms around her. Fleurange sprang up, her eyes full of tears. “Do you remember,” said Hilda in a soft, caressing tone—“do you remember, Gabrielle, the day when I also wept in the library at our dear Old Mansion? You asked me the reason of my tears, and I answered by opening my heart to you. You have not forgotten it, have you? Will you not answer me in a like way now?” Fleurange shook her head without uttering a word. “It has always seemed to me,” continued Hilda, “that the happiness which has crowned my life dates from my confidence in you that day. Why will you not trust me in a like manner, and hope as I did?” “Happiness was within your reach,” replied Fleurange; “an imaginary obstacle alone prevented you from grasping it.” “But how many obstacles that seem insurmountable vanish with time or even beneath a firm will!” She continued slowly and in a lower tone: “Why should not the Count George, then—” “Stop, Hilda, I conjure you,” cried Fleurange in an agitated manner. Her cousin stopped confounded. “Listen to me,” resumed Fleurange, at length, in a calmer tone. “As it is your wish, let us speak of him. I consent. Let us speak of him this time, but never again. Tell me,” she continued with a sad smile, “can you make me his equal in wealth and rank? Or deprive him of his nobility and make him as poor as I? In either case, especially in the latter,” she cried, with a tenderness in her tone, and a look she could not repress—“ah! nothing, certainly nothing but his will, could separate me from him! But it is reasonable to suppose the sun will rise upon us to‐morrow and find us the same as to‐day: we no longer live in the time of fairies, when extraordinary metamorphoses took place to smooth away difficulties and second the wishes of poor mortals. Help me then, Hilda, I beseech you, to forget him, to live, and even recover from the wound, by never speaking to me either of him, or myself!—” Hilda silently pressed her in her arms for a long time, and then said: “I will obey you, Gabrielle, and never mention his name till you speak of him first.” XXXVIII. The summer and autumn both passed away without anything new, except some variations in the professor’s slow recovery, and an occasional gleam of happiness for Clement—the revival of a spark of his buried hopes—but such moments were rare, and succeeded by a sad reaction; nevertheless, they were sweet and lived long in his memory.