ept the same friend as your own! Would that he might dare to hope
that some day, however distant, you would grant him a nearer, dearer
title! Would that he might believe such a joy possible!"

Bertha spoke no word, made no movement, but sat with her eyes bent on
the ground. Her manner emboldened Gaston to seize her hand; she did not
withdraw it from his clasp; then he comprehended his joy, and poured out
the history of his long-concealed passion with a tender eloquence of
which he never imagined himself capable.

If, when he awoke that morning from a dream in which Bertha's lovely
countenance was vividly pictured, some prophetic voice had whispered
that ere the sun went down he would have uttered such language, and she
have listened to it, he would not have believed the verification of that
delightful prediction within the bounds of possibility. Yet, when the
happy pair left the capital grounds to return to the hotel, Gaston
walked by the side of his betrothed bride.

It is true that the wealthy heiress had lured on her self-distrusting
lover to make a declaration which he had not contemplated; but who will
charge her with unmaidenly conduct? The most modest of women are daily
doing, unaware, what Bertha did somewhat more consciously. Shakespeare,
who read the hearts of women with the penetrating eyes of a seer, and
who never painted a heroine who was not the type of a class, pictured no
rare or imaginary order of being in his beauteous Desdemona,--

"A maiden never bold,
Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blushed at herself,"--

who was yet "_half the wooer_." And there is no lack of men who can
testify (in spite of the feminine denial which we anticipate) that they
owe their happiness (or misery) to some gentle, timid girl who was
nevertheless "_half the wooer_."

CHAPTER XXXV.

A REVELATION.

Bertha was too happy as she walked toward the hotel, to dread the
rebukes which she had good reason to anticipate from the countess. For a
young lady to traverse the streets alone with a gentleman, however
intimate a friend, was, according to the strict rules of French
etiquette, a gross breach of propriety. And, though the escort of a
gentleman was deemed allowable in the purer and less conventional
society of the land in which they were sojourning, Bertha knew that her
supercilious aunt considered all customs barbarous but those of her
refined native country.

The countess wa