Still she did not open her heart to her parents. The baron, alive at that time, was exasperated against the Republic, and all who served it; and, as for the baroness, she was of the old school: a passionate love in a lady’s heart before marriage was contrary to her notions of etiquette. Josephine loved Rose very tenderly; but shrank with modest delicacy from making her a confidante of feelings, the bare relation of which leaves the female hearer a child no longer. So she hid her heart, and delicious first love nestled deep in her nature, and thrilled in every secret vein and fibre. They had parted two years, and he had joined the army of the Pyrenees about one month, when suddenly all correspondence ceased on his part. Restless anxiety rose into terror as this silence continued; and starting and trembling at every sound, and edging to the window at every footstep, Josephine expected hourly the tidings of her lover’s death. Months rolled on in silence. Then a new torture came. He must not be dead but unfaithful. At this all the pride of her race was fired in her. The struggle between love and ire was almost too much for nature: violently gay and moody by turns she alarmed both her mother and the good Dr. Aubertin. The latter was not, I think, quite without suspicion of the truth; however, he simply prescribed change of air and place; she must go to Frejus, a watering-place distant about five leagues. Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire yielded a languid assent. To her all places were alike. But when they returned from Frejus a change had taken place. Rose had extracted her sister’s secret, and was a changed girl. Pity, and the keen sense of Josephine’s wrong, had raised her sisterly love to a passion. The great-hearted girl hovered about her lovely, suffering sister like an angel, and paid her the tender attentions of a devoted lover, and hated Camille Dujardin with all her heart: hated him all the more that she saw Josephine shrink even from her whenever she inveighed against him.