"Oh! Michel is incapable of betraying anybody's confidence," she replied, struggling to maintain her courage at the level of the crisis she had provoked; "and I, Magnani, am incapable of leading my brother on to such a base thing. Besides, why should I be at all interested, I should like to know?" "Of course, it must be a matter of entire indifference to you," replied Magnani, completely crushed. "Indifference is not the word," she said; "I have much esteem and friendship for you, Magnani, and I pray for your happiness. But I am interested in my own happiness, too, so that I have no time to be idle and pry into other people's secrets." "Your happiness! At your age, Mila, happiness is love; so you are in love, too, are you?" "In love? why not? Do you consider me too young to think about such things?" "Ah! my dear child, you are at the age when one should think about such things, for at my age love is despair." "Why, is your love not returned? I was not mistaken in thinking that you are unhappy?" "No, my love is not returned," he replied, dejectedly, "and never will be; I have never even dreamed that it would." A more romantic and more experienced woman than Mila might have looked upon that admission as a definitive obstacle to all hope; but her ideas of life were more simple and more logical: "If he has no hope, he will recover," she thought. "I pity you deeply," she said to Magnani, "for it is such great happiness to feel that one is loved, and it must be so ghastly to love all by oneself!" "You will never know such a misfortune," Magnani replied; "and the man you love should be the most grateful and the proudest of men!" "I am satisfied with him," she said, gratified to feel that jealousy was beginning to make itself felt in the young man's perturbed heart; "but listen, Magnani! there is a noise in my brother's room." Magnani ran to the other door; but, while he was making vain efforts to distinguish the nature of the noises Mila had heard, she heard other noises in the yard. She looked through the blind, and, beckoning to Magnani, pointed out to him Michel's mysterious guest, who was gliding toward the street so lightly and adroitly, that unless one had a delicate ear and keen eye and was on the alert, expecting to see him, it would have been impossible to detect his movements. Even Michel had not been roused from the light doze into which he had fallen. Mila was still very ill at ease, although Magnani urged her to take some rest, promising that he would remain in the yard or in the gallery, and that Michel should not leave the house without him. As soon as Magnani had left her, she fell upon a chair and drew her table noisily along the floor, so that she might hear Michel wake and move about in his turn.