, for I am about to transgress.
At all hazards, I must touch upon a subject which you have banished from
our conversation."

For a moment Madeleine looked disturbed, but this warning enabled her to
collect herself; she soon said, with composure,--

"Even if you do not spare _me_, Maurice, do not touch on any theme which
must give pain to yourself."

"I have not yet quite decided," returned he, "how much pain it may cost
me. I will only ask you to answer me a few questions. As I am a lawyer,
cross-examination, you know, is my vocation, and you must indulge me.
Nearly five years ago you declared that you had bestowed your heart
irrevocably. You were very young then,--you had had few opportunities of
seeing gentlemen; yet you have remained constant to this mysterious
lover? You have never repented that you loved him?"

"Never!" answered Madeleine, with fervor.

"And you believe that he loves you?"

Madeleine bowed her head.

"And you have loved him long? Perhaps you loved him early in your
girlhood; perhaps you loved him from the time you first met?"

Madeleine bowed her head again.

"Even as _he did you_?"

"I do not know," she answered, in a low voice.

"That is strange; men are apt to boast of the length as well as of the
strength of their passion," remarked Maurice. "Your lover must be an
exception. But perhaps he is unaware that he is blest by your love?"

Without suspicion Madeleine fell into that snare, well-laid by the young
lawyer, for she answered, thinking that it would calm the jealous pangs
to which Maurice might be subjected,--

"You are right; he is _not_ aware that I love him."

Had her eyes not been downcast, had she looked up for an instant into
the face of Maurice, she would have known by its look of radiant ecstasy
that she had betrayed herself.

In a tone which emotion rendered unsteady, he went on,--

"You would cast your lot with his, Madeleine? If he were poor, you would
share his poverty? You would even abandon your dream of earning a
fortune for yourself,--and I know how dear that dream is to your
heart,--for his sake? You would do this were there no barrier to the
avowal of your love,--no barrier to your union with him?"

"I would."

"And that barrier is the opposition of his proud relatives?" asserted
Maurice.

Madeleine started, looked in his face in alarm; for the first time, the
suspicion that he had divined her secret, flashed upon her.

But Maurice went on unpityin