think she will be behind you in delicacy? or that a love without
respect will satisfy her? yet you must go and tell her you respected her
too much to ask her to marry you secretly. In other words, situated as
she is, you asked her not to marry you at all: she consented to that
directly; what else could you expect?"

"Maladroit! indeed," said Camille, "but I would not have said it, only I
thought"--

"You thought nothing would induce her to marry secretly, so you said to
yourself, 'I will assume a virtue: I will do a bit of cheap self-denial:
decline to the sound of trumpets what another will be sure to deny me if
I don't--ha! ha!'--well, for your comfort, I am by no means so sure she
might not have been brought to do ANYTHING for you, except openly defy
mamma: but now of course"--

And here this young lady's sentence ended: for the sisters, unlike in
most things, were one in grammar.

Camille was so disconcerted and sad at what he had done, that Rose began
to pity him: so she rallied him a little longer in spite of her pity:
and then all of a sudden gave him her hand, and said she would try and
repair the mischief.

He began to smother her hand with kisses.

"Oh!" said she, "I don't deserve all that: I have a motive of my own;
let me alone, child, do. Your unlucky speech will be quoted to me a
dozen times. Never mind."

Rose went and bribed Josephine to consent.

"Come, mamma shall not know, and as for you, you shall scarcely move in
the matter; only do not oppose me very violently, and all will be well."

"Ah, Rose!" said Josephine; "it is delightful--terrible, I mean--to have
a little creature about one that reads one like this. What shall I do?
What shall I do?"

"Why, do the best you can under all the circumstances. His wound is
healed, you know; he must go back to the army; you have both suffered to
the limits of mortal endurance. Is he to go away unhappy, in any
doubt of your affection? and you to remain behind with the misery of
self-reproach added to the desolation of absence?--think."

"It is cruel. But to deceive my mother!"

"Do not say deceive our mother; that is such a shocking phrase."

Rose then reminded Josephine that their confessor had told them a wise
reticence was not the same thing as a moral deceit. She reminded her,
too, how often they had acted on his advice and always with good effect;
how many anxieties and worries they had saved their mother by reticence.
Josephine assented war