re mingled. He questioned her with his eyes,
but the firm and steady gaze of the young girl controlled his look.

"You see, Mercedes," said the young man, "here is Easter come round
again; tell me, is this the moment for a wedding?"

"I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really you must be
very stupid to ask me again."

"Well, repeat it,--repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at last believe
it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you refuse my love, which had
your mother's sanction. Make me understand once for all that you are
trifling with my happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you.
Ah, to have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercedes, and
to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my existence!"

"At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, Fernand,"
replied Mercedes; "you cannot reproach me with the slightest coquetry.
I have always said to you, 'I love you as a brother; but do not ask from
me more than sisterly affection, for my heart is another's.' Is not this
true, Fernand?"

"Yes, that is very true, Mercedes," replied the young man, "Yes, you
have been cruelly frank with me; but do you forget that it is among the
Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?"

"You mistake, Fernand; it is not a law, but merely a custom, and, I pray
of you, do not cite this custom in your favor. You are included in the
conscription, Fernand, and are only at liberty on sufferance, liable at
any moment to be called upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would
you do with me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing
but a half-ruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable inheritance
left by my father to my mother, and by my mother to me? She has been
dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I have subsisted almost entirely on
public charity. Sometimes you pretend I am useful to you, and that is
an excuse to share with me the produce of your fishing, and I accept it,
Fernand, because you are the son of my father's brother, because we were
brought up together, and still more because it would give you so much
pain if I refuse. But I feel very deeply that this fish which I go and
sell, and with the produce of which I buy the flax I spin,--I feel very
keenly, Fernand, that this is charity."

"And if it were, Mercedes, poor and lone as you are, you suit me as
well as the daughter of the first shipowner or the richest banker
of Marseilles! What do such as we desire but a g