d every inquisition she made of her
heart returned the self-same answer: she loved Pierre Philibert!

It was in vain she accused herself of possible impropriety: that it was
bold, unmaidenly, censurable, nay, perhaps sinful, to give her heart
before it had been asked for; but if she had to die for it, she could
not conceal the truth, that she loved Pierre Philibert! "I ought to be
angry with myself," said she. "I try to be so, but I cannot! Why?"

"Why?" Amelie solved the query as every true woman does, who asks
herself why she loves one man rather than another. "Because he has
chosen me out in preference to all others, to be the treasure-keeper of
his affections! I am proud," continued Amelie, "that he gives his love
to me, to me! unworthy as I am of such preference. I am no better than
others." Amelie was a true woman: proud as an empress before other men,
she was humble and lowly as the Madonna in the presence of him whom she
felt was, by right of love, lord and master of her affections.

Amelie could not overcome a feeling of tremor in the presence of Pierre
since she made this discovery. Her cheek warmed with an incipient flush
when his ardent eyes glanced at her too eloquently. She knew what was
in his heart, and once or twice, when casually alone with Philibert, she
saw his lips quivering under a hard restraint to keep in the words, the
dear words, she thought, which would one day burst forth in a flood
of passionate eloquence, overwhelming all denial, and make her his own
forever.

Time and tide, which come to all once in our lives, as the poet says,
and which must be taken at their flood to lead to fortune, came at
length to Amelie de Repentigny.

It came suddenly and in an unlooked-for hour, the great question of
questions to her as to every woman.

The hour of birth and the hour of death are in God's hand, but the hour
when a woman, yielding to the strong enfolding arm of a man who loves
her, falters forth an avowal of her love, and plights her troth, and
vows to be one with him till death, God leaves that question to be
decided by her own heart. His blessing rests upon her choice, if pure
love guides and reason enlightens affection. His curse infallibly
follows every faithless pledge where no heart is, every union that is
not the marriage of love and truth. These alone can be married, and
where these are absent there is no marriage at all in the face of
Heaven, and but the simulation of one on earth, a