Poor Mary had listened, trembling, to this explosion of an almost savage passion, such as the powerful and self-willed nature of Bertha alone could feel. Each cry, each word, each sentence tore to shreds the rosy vapors which a few moments earlier she had seen on the horizon. Her sister's impetuous voice swept those fragments from her sight, as the gust of a rising tempest sweeps the light, fleecy clouds before it. Her grief and bewilderment was such during Bertha's last words that the latter's silence alone warned her she was expected to reply. She made a great effort over herself, striving to check her sobs. "Oh, sister," she said, "my heart is breaking; my grief is all the greater because what has happened to-night is partly my fault." "No, no!" cried Bertha, with her accustomed violence. "It was I who ought to have looked to see what became of him when we left the chapel. But," she continued, with that pertinacity of ideas which characterizes persons who are violently in love, "what was he saying to you? Why was he kneeling at your feet?" Mary felt that Bertha shuddered as she asked the question; she herself trembled violently at the thought of what she had to answer. It seemed to her that each word by which she was forced to explain the truth to Bertha would scorch her lips as they left her heart. "Come, come!" said Bertha, weeping, her tears having more effect on Mary than her anger,--"Come, tell me, dear sister; have pity on me! The suspense is worse a hundred-fold than any pain. Tell me, tell me; did he speak to you of love?" Mary could not lie; or rather, self-devotion had not yet taught her to do so. "Yes," she said. "Oh, my God! my God!" cried Bertha, tearing herself from her sister's breast and falling, with outstretched arms, her face against the wall. There was such a tone of absolute despair in the cry that Mary was terrified. She forgot Michel, she forgot her love; she forgot all except her sister. The sacrifice before which her heart had quailed at the moment when she first heard that Bertha loved Michel, she now made valiantly, with sublime self-abnegation; for she smiled, with a breaking heart. "Foolish girl that you are!" she cried, springing to Bertha's neck; "let me finish what I have to say." "Did you not tell me that he spoke of love?" replied the suffering creature. "Yes; but I did not tell you whom he loves." "Mary! Mary! have pity on my heart!" "Bertha! dear Bertha!" "Was it of me he spoke?" Mary had not the strength to reply in words; she made a sign of acquiescence with her head. Bertha breathed heavily, passed her hand several times over her burning forehead. The shock had been too violent to allow her to recover instantly her normal condition. "Mary," she said, "what you have just told me seems so unlikely, so impossible, that you must swear it. Swear to me--" She hesitated.