h what a wicked, ill-stifled merriment those two ethereal women
bend forward in the faintly perfumed clouds of their ravishing
summer-evening garb, to express their equivocal mortification
and regret.

"Oh! I'm so sawry, oh! Almoze runned o'--ah, ha, ha, ha!"

Aurora could keep the laugh back no longer.

"An' righd yeh befo' haivry _boddie_! Ah, ha, ha! 'Sieur Grandissime,
'tis _me-e-e_ w'ad know 'ow dad is bad, ha, ha, ha! Oh! I assu' you,
gen'lemen, id is hawful!"

And so on.

By and by Honore seemed urging them to do something, the thought of
which made them laugh, yet was entertained as not entirely absurd. It
may have been that to which they presently seemed to consent; they
alighted from the volante, dismissed it, and walked each at a partner's
side down the grassy avenue of the levee. It was as Clotilde with one
hand swept her light robes into perfect adjustment for the walk, and
turned to take the first step with Frowenfeld, that she raised her eyes
for the merest instant to his, and there passed between them an exchange
of glance which made the heart of the little doctor suddenly burn like a
ball of fire.

"Now we're all right," he murmured bitterly to himself, as, without
having seen him, she took the arm of the apothecary, and they
moved away.

Yes, if his irony was meant for this pair, he divined correctly. Their
hearts had found utterance across the lips, and the future stood waiting
for them on the threshold of a new existence, to usher them into a
perpetual copartnership in all its joys and sorrows, its
disappointments, its imperishable hopes, its aims, its conflicts, its
rewards; and the true--the great--the everlasting God of love was with
them. Yes, it had been "all right," now, for nearly twenty-four
hours--an age of bliss. And now, as they walked beneath the willows
where so many lovers had walked before them, they had whole histories to
tell of the tremors, the dismays, the misconstructions and longings
through which their hearts had come to this bliss; how at such a time,
thus and so; and after such and such a meeting, so and so; no part of
which was heard by alien ears, except a fragment of Clotilde's speech
caught by a small boy in unintentioned ambush.

"--Evva sinze de firze nighd w'en I big-in to nurze you wid de fivver."

She was telling him, with that new, sweet boldness so wonderful to a
lately accepted lover, how long she had loved him.

Later on they parted at the _porte-coch