Letters of Two Brides

"Come and look at the stars, Griffith."

Griffith was sleeping as only old maids can. But the Moor, hearing me,

slid down, and vanished with ghostly rapidity.

He must have been dying of fright, and so was I, for I did not hear

him go away; apparently he remained at the foot of the elm. After a

good quarter of an hour, during which I lost myself in contemplation

of the heavens, and battled with the waves of curiosity, I closed my

widow and sat down on the bed to unfold the delicate bit of paper,

with the tender touch of a worker amongst the ancient manuscripts at

Naples. It felt redhot to my fingers. "What a horrible power this man

has over me!" I said to myself.

All at once I held out the paper to the candle--I would burn it

without reading a word. Then a thought stayed me, "What can he have to

say that he writes so secretly?" Well, dear, I did burn it,

reflecting that, though any other girl in the world would have

devoured the letter, it was not fitting that I--Armande-Louise-Marie

de Chaulieu--should read it.

The next day, at the Italian opera, he was at his post. But I feel

sure that, ex-prime minister of a constitutional government though he

is, he could not discover the slightest agitation of mind in any

movement of mine. I might have seen nothing and received nothing the

evening before. This was most satisfactory to me, but he looked very

sad. Poor man! in Spain it is so natural for love to come in at the

window! During the interval, it seems, he came and walked in the passages.

This I learned from the chief secretary of the Spanish embassy, who

also told the story of a noble action of his.

As Duc de Soria he was to marry one of the richest heiresses in Spain,

the young princess Marie Heredia, whose wealth would have mitigated

the bitterness of exile. But it seems that Marie, disappointing the

wishes of the fathers, who had betrothed them in their earliest

childhood, loved the younger son of the house of Soria, to whom my

Felipe, gave her up. Allowing himself to be despoiled by the King of

Spain. "He would perform this piece of heroism quite simply," I said to the

young man.

"You know him then?" was his ingenuous reply. My mother smiled. "What will become of him, for he is condemned to death?" I asked. "Though dead to Spain, he can live in Sardinia." "Ah! then Spain is the country of tombs as well as castles?" I said,

trying to carry it off as a joke.