"Oh, you would not care to hear, Miriam," I replied, "and could do me no good if you did hear." "Oh, but I should care to hear," she said, "for I love you very much, seigneur. I loved you, from the first moment I saw you, almost as much--no, not so much as I love him." "Were you going to say your father, Miriam?" I said. "No," she said, "Not him. I was going to say as Martin Vern." And the girl coloured a little as she spoke, but added immediately, "But he loves you too, and told me how kind you had been to him when he was at the siege of Angoulême, and how you had given him your hand to help him up into the breach, and how you had carried him down in your arms when he was wounded, and saved his life, and been to him like a brother; which, for a lord and a soldier like you, he thought very kind indeed." "You seem to have talked very much about me, Miriam," I said. "When was all this?" "Oh, it was when we were last in Paris," replied the girl; "when we were staying at the house of Levi, my father's cousin, who has become a Christian, you know; and then I would go and see the lady that you had written to, which he told me about, and who had written to you again, and sent it to my fathers house at Bordeaux for the old merchant. And when the Baron de Blancford wanted the Persian silver brocade for his wife, I went with Martin Vern, that is, with the old merchant, and saw the young lady too, and spoke with her in the cabinet behind the great saloon. I told her then that if she would write you a letter, and send it to Levi's house, it should be conveyed to you; but I did not think then that I should carry it myself." "And was it so the letter came to me?" I said. "I had fancied, Miriam, that your father had got it when he was in the Protestant camp." "Oh, no," she replied; "I carried it all the way in my bosom. And now I wish you would tell me why you are so sad, and why she looked so sad too. Perhaps I could do more than you know." "Oh, no, Miriam," I answered, "You could do no thing, my good girl. That which makes me sad would need a more skilful surgeon than you are to cure." She looked in my face for a moment, as if to see whether I was speaking plainly or metaphorically, and she then cried, "Ay, now I understand you. You love her, and she loves you, and they will not give her to you in marriage." "Ay, Miriam," I answered, with a sigh, as she came so near the truth; "and they talk of giving her to another." "Who to? who to?" cried the girl, eagerly. "I heard something once which makes me suspect." "Oh, no," I replied, "You know him not, Miriam. His name is the Seigneur de Blaye."