at
church in Havre, was a deceiver?"

"Never!" she cried; "that noble head, that pale face full of poetry--"

"--was a lie," said the colonel interrupting her. "He was no more
Monsieur de Canalis than I am that sailor over there putting out to
sea."

"Do you know what you are killing in me?" she said in a low voice.

"Comfort yourself, my child; though accident has put the punishment of
your fault into the fault itself, the harm done is not irreparable.
The young man whom you have seen, and with whom you exchanged hearts
by correspondence, is a loyal and honorable fellow; he came to me and
confided everything. He loves you, and I have no objection to him as a
son-in-law."

"If he is not Canalis, who is he then?" said Modeste in a changed voice.

"The secretary; his name is Ernest de La Briere. He is not a nobleman;
but he is one of those plain men with fixed principles and sound
morality who satisfy parents. However, that is not the point; you
have seen him and nothing can change your heart; you have chosen him,
comprehend his soul, it is as beautiful as he himself."

The count was interrupted by a heavy sigh from Modeste. The poor girl
sat with her eyes fixed on the sea, pale and rigid as death, as if a
pistol shot had struck her in those fatal words, _a plain man, with
fixed principles and sound morality_.

"Deceived!" she said at last.

"Like your poor sister, but less fatally."

"Let us go home, father," she said, rising from the hillock on which
they were sitting. "Papa, hear me, I swear before God to obey your
wishes, whatever they may be, in the _affair_ of my marriage."

"Then you don't love him any longer?" asked her father.

"I loved an honest man, with no falsehood on his face, upright as
yourself, incapable of disguising himself like an actor, with the paint
of another man's glory on his cheeks."

"You said nothing could change you"; remarked the colonel, ironically.

"Ah, do not trifle with me!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands and
looking at her father in distressful anxiety; "don't you see that you
are wringing my heart and destroying my beliefs with your jokes."

"God forbid! I have told you the exact truth."

"You are very kind, father," she said after a pause, and with a sort of
solemnity.

"He has kept your letters," resumed the colonel; "now suppose the rash
caresses of your soul had fallen into the hands of one of those poets
who, as Dumay says, light their cigars with them?"