"Of my dear Savinien," cried the girl, bursting into tears. "Yes, my
good friend," she said, sobbing, "a voice tells me he is as noble in
heart as he is in race. He has not only told me that he loves me
alone, but he has proved it in a hundred delicate ways, and by
restraining heroically his ardent feelings. Lately when he took the
hand I held out to him, that evening when Monsieur Bongrand proposed
to me a husband, it was the first time, I swear to you, that I had
ever given it. He began with a jest when he blew me a kiss across the
street, but since then our affection has never outwardly passed, as
you well know, the narrowest limits. But I will tell you,--you who
read my soul except in this one region where none but the angels see,
--well, I will tell you, this love has been in me the secret spring of
many seeming merits; it made me accept my poverty; it softened the
bitterness of my irreparable loss, for my mourning is more perhaps in
my clothes now than in my heart-- Oh, was I wrong? can it be that love
was stronger in me than my gratitude to my benefactor, and God has
punished me for it? But how could it be otherwise? I respected in
myself Savinien's future wife; yes, perhaps I was too proud, perhaps
it is that pride which God has humbled.
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