nt--standing looking at each other. To me
it seemed incredible indeed.

"He could not give her up," Clelie went on, "until he was sure she
wished to discard him. The mother had employed all her ingenuity to
force him to believe that such was the case, but he could not rest
until he had seen his betrothed face to face. So he followed her,--poor,
inexperienced, and miserable,--and when at last he saw her at a
distance, the luxury with which she was surrounded caused his heart to
fail him, and he gave way to despair."

I accompanied her into the room, and heard the rest from his own lips.
He gathered together all his small savings, and made his journey in
the cheapest possible way,--in the steerage of the vessel, and in
third-class carriages,--so that he might have some trifle left to
subsist upon.

"I've a little farm," he said, "and there's a house on it, but I
wouldn't sell that. If she cared to go, it was all I had to take her to,
an' I'd worked hard to buy it. I'd worked hard, early and late, always
thinking that some day we'd begin life there together--Esmeraldy and
me."

"Since neither sea, nor land, nor cruelty, could separate them," said
Clelie to me during the day, "it is not I who will help to hold them
apart."

So when Mademoiselle came for her lesson that afternoon, it was Clelie's
task to break the news to her,--to tell her that neither sea nor land
lay between herself and her lover, and that he was faithful still.

She received the information as she might have received a
blow,--staggering backward, and whitening, and losing her breath; but
almost immediately afterward she uttered a sad cry of disbelief and
anguish.

"No, no," she said, "it--it isn't true! I won't believe it--I mustn't.
There's half the world between us. Oh, don't try to make me believe
it,--when it can't be true!"

"Come with me," replied Clelie.

Never--never in my life has it been my fate to see, before or since,
a sight so touching as the meeting of these two young hearts. When the
door of the cold, bare room opened, and Mademoiselle Esmeralda entered,
the lover held out his weak arms with a sob,--a sob of rapture, and yet
terrible to hear.

"I thought you'd gone back on me, Esmeraldy," he cried. "I thought you'd
gone back on me."

Clelie and I turned away and left them as the girl fell upon her knees
at his side.

The effect produced upon the father--who had followed Mademoiselle as
usual, and whom we found patiently s