expressions. Camille smiled bitterly as her keen mind recognized in
Calyste the symptoms of a passion such as man can feel but once,--a
passion which dyes his soul and his faculties by mingling with the
fountain of his life at a period when neither thoughts nor cares
distract or oppose the inward working of this emotion. She saw that
Calyste would never, could never see the real woman that was in
Beatrix.

And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his
thoughts to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick
woman turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even
mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.

"Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and
ended by flinging us down a precipice?"

When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which
betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her
moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.

"You have the right to reject my love forever," he said, "and I, I
have no right to say one word to you."

"Ah!" cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix's face and
comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, "love has a
wit of its own, wiser than that of all the world! Take your
composing-draught, my dear friend, and go to sleep."

That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read
a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read "Indiana,"--the