. They looked a wonderfully
handsome pair, as they rode leisurely through the leafy arcades. But
there was one very marked difference between them.

The young man's countenance was radiant with happiness and smiles,
but the girl's face was clouded over with an abiding melancholy.
Occasionally her brother's lively sallies would bring a faint smile to
her sweet lips, but they fell back immediately into the mournful droop
that had become habitual with them. Vallombreuse apparently did not
perceive it--though in reality he was well aware of it, and of its
cause--and was full of fun and frolic.

"Oh! what a delicious thing it is to live," he cried, "yet how seldom
we think of the exquisite enjoyment there is in the simple act of
breathing," and he drew a long, deep breath, as if he never could get
enough of the soft, balmy air. "The trees surely were never so green
before, the sky so blue, or the flowers so fragrant. I feet as if I had
been born into the world only yesterday, and was looking upon nature for
the first time to-day. I never appreciated it before. When I remember
that I might even now be lying, stiff and stark, under a fine marble
monument, and that instead of that I am riding through an elysium,
beside my darling sister, who has really learned to love me, I am too
divinely happy. I do not even feel my wound any more. I don't believe
that I ever was wounded. And now for a gallop, for I'm sure that our
good father is wearying for us at home."

In spite of Isabelle's remonstrances he put spurs to his horse, and she
could not restrain hers when its companion bounded forward, so off
they went at a swift pace, and never drew rein until they reached the
chateau. As he lifted his sister down from her saddle, Vallombreuse
said, "Now, after to-day's achievement, I can surely be treated like a
big boy, and get permission to go out by myself."

"What! you want to go away and leave us already? and scarcely well yet,
you bad boy!"

"Even so, my sweet sister; I want to make a little journey that will
take several days," said Vallombreuse negligently.

Accordingly, the very next morning he departed, after having taken an
affectionate leave of the prince, his father; who did not oppose
his going, as Isabelle had confidently expected, but seemed, on the
contrary, to approve of it heartily. After receiving many charges to
be careful and prudent, from his sister, which he dutifully promised to
remember and obey, the young d