ails from her lonely homesick heart, going back as far as her own
lost mother, and her young step-mother Angelique. But it was not until
one of these later midnight talks that the girl had spoken of her own
betrothal. Helen was much surprised--the only surprise she had shown. "I
should never have dreamed it, Crystal!" she exclaimed. "Never!" (Crystal
was her name for Anne.)

"Why not?"

"Because you are so--young."

"But it often happens at my age. The fort ladies were married at
eighteen and nineteen, and my own dear mother was only twenty."

"You adore this Rast, I suppose?"

"Yes, I like him."

"Nonsense! You mean that you adore him."

"Perhaps I do," said Anne, smiling. "I have noticed that our use of
words is different."

"And how long have you adored him?"

"All my life."

The little sentence came forth gravely and sincerely. Helen surveyed the
speaker with a quizzical expression in her narrow brown eyes. "No one
'adores' all one's life," she answered. Then, as Anne did not take up
the challenge, she paused, and, after surveying her companion in silence
for a moment, added, "There is no time fixed as yet for this marriage?"

"No; Rast has his position to make first. And I myself should be better
pleased to have four or five years to give to the children before we are
married. I am anxious to educate the boys."

"Bon!" said Helen. "All will yet end well, Virginie. My compliments to
Paul. It is a pretty island pastoral, this little romance of yours; you
have my good wishes."

The island pastoral was simple indeed compared with the net-work of
fancies and manoeuvres disclosed by Helen. Her life seemed to be a drama.
Her personages were masked under fictitious names; the Poet, the
Haunted Man, the Knight-errant, the Chanting Tenor, and the Bishop, all
figured in her recitals, to which Anne listened with intense interest.
Helen was a brilliant story-teller. She could give the salient points of
a conversation, and these only. She colored everything, of course,
according to her own fancy; but one could forgive her that for her
skillful avoidance of dull details, whose stupid repetition, simply
because they are true, is a habit with which many good people are
afflicted.

The narrations, of course, were of love and lovers: it is always so in
the midnight talks of women over the dying fire. Even the most secluded
country girl will on such occasions unroll a list as long as
Leporello's. The listener may kn