She was writing, she said, on the evening of August 16th. She had just received my letter, and was answering it immediately. She wanted to be the first to send me a word of consolation in my sorrow. My sorrow? I did not quite understand. It seemed to me that there was no reason now for anything but envy. Then I reddened. Had I not told her of my brother's death, on that card? Ah yes, whether consciously or unconsciously, I had calculated on arousing her pity, her tenderness, and I had succeeded. She professed herself overcome with emotion. My only brother! Why--she reproached me gently--had I spoken of him so rarely? She could see from the tone of my letter how much I loved him. It was natural--the only being in the world fashioned after my likeness, hardly any older than myself, the playmate of my childhood, the confidant of my adolescence. The same profound and simple reasons which my rejuvenated heart had suggested to me. I held Victor more dear, I regretted him more poignantly. I blessed Jeannine for having guessed my brotherly affection. In my card, I had made some passing allusion to the two little orphans. Here again her thoughts ran hand-in-hand with mine; she tactfully confirmed me in the idea of my duties. Oh! with what sublime trust, with what exquisite and ingenuous sympathy these lines overflowed. This language, so new between us, seemed to me usual and necessary. Jeannine made some reference to the footing we had been on at Ballaigues, when the tone of our trifling had merely been one of playful courtesy. She appeared to apologise for the disguise adopted then. Now we might see each other face to face. She professed her friendship for me. She did not hesitate to make use of that word, so delicious and pure, in which I read another, essentially the same, but more magnificent illuminating the entire universe! I had not a shadow of doubt; she cannot have had either. It was the letter of a fiancée. What surprised me was that we had delayed so long, before seeing into our hearts. Ever since my departure, and every day more surely, was not the vision of this child the only one which at the approach of danger consoled me with a hope, towards whom, in the hour of safety, my mirth rose up like incense. This hearth had ceased long since to smoulder under cinders; powerful and generous, it flung its ardent flames towards the sky. And had I doubted, Jeannine, lest my passion should not be reciprocated. Could I not summon up a certain look of yours, or an inflection of your voice which already bore witness to the chaste avowal. How fervently your fingers had lingered in mine at parting. We had been consecrated to each other ever since that time. The present was less surprising--child of the wondrous past! I seemed already to have spelt out these pages, upon which I was feasting, in the course of some dream. Their enchantment, as adored memories, was doubled for me!...