"Here I am recovered and everything is
ready."
Why did we wait, indeed? I do not know. Seated near the fire, my eyes
wandered from Smith to my mistress. I saw that they were both pale,
serious, silent. I did not know why they were thus, and I could not help
repeating that there was but one cause, but one secret to learn; but that
was not one of those vague, sickly suspicions, such as had formerly
tormented me, but an instinct, persistent and fatal. What strange
creatures we! It pleased me to leave them alone before the fire and to go
out on the quay to dream, leaning on the parapet and looking at the
water. When they spoke of their life at N-----, and when Brigitte, almost
cheerful, assumed a motherly air to recall some incident of their
childhood days, it seemed to me that I suffered, and yet took pleasure in
it. I asked questions; I spoke to Smith of his mother, of his plans and
his prospects. I gave him an opportunity to show himself in a favorable
light and forced his modesty to reveal his merit.
"You love your sister very much, do you not?" I asked. "When do you
expect her to marry?"
He blushed and replied that his expenses were rather heavy but that it
would probably be within two years, perhaps sooner, if his health would
permit him to do some extra work which would bring in enough to provide
her dowry; that there was a family in the country, whose eldest son was
her friend; that they were almost agreed on it, and that fortune would
one day come, like rest, without thinking of it; that he had set aside
for his sister, a part of the money left by their father; that their
mother was opposed to it but that he would insist on it; that a young man
may live from hand to mouth, but that the fate of a young girl is fixed
on the day of her marriage.
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