e started perceptibly. Gilberte blushed deeply, and extending her arms
with a conscious, caressing movement, drew her friend to her and rested
her head upon her bosom.

"Yes," she almost whispered, "I saw that you noticed it. Darling, you
must not judge me too severely. He is an old friend; I told you all
about it at Charleville, long ago, you remember." Her voice sank
lower still; there was something that sounded very like a laugh of
satisfaction in her tender tones. "He pleaded so with me yesterday
that I would see him just once more. Just think, this morning he is in
action; he may be dead by this. How could I refuse him?" It was all
so heroic and so charming, the contrast was so delicious between war's
stern reality and tender sentiment; thoughtless as a linnet, she smiled
again, notwithstanding her confusion. Never could she have found it
in her heart to drive him from her door, when circumstances all were
propitious for the interview. "Do you condemn me?"

Henriette had listened to her confidences with a very grave face. Such
things surprised her, for she could not understand them; it must be that
she was constituted differently from other women. Her heart that morning
was with her husband, her brother, down there where the battle was
raging. How was it possible that anyone could sleep so peacefully and be
so gay and cheerful when the loved ones were in peril?

"But think of your husband, my dear, and of that poor young man as well.
Does not your heart yearn to be with them? You do not reflect that
their lifeless forms may be brought in and laid before your eyes at any
moment."

Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to shield her
vision from the frightful picture.

"O Heaven! what is that you say? It is cruel of you to destroy all
the pleasure of my morning in this way. No, no; I won't think of such
things. They are too mournful."

Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anxiety. She
was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte's father,
Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of
customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active
service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of
his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible
disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near
Chene-Populeux. The little maid was not nine years old, and already
she was a consum