Ursula

doesn't marry me I'll make her die of grief."
    "Do it, my boy, and I'll GIVE you the money to buy a practice in Paris. You can then marry a rich woman—"
    "Poor Ursula! what makes you so bitter against her? what has she done to you?" asked the clerk in surprise.
    "She annoys me," said Minoret, gruffly.
    "Well, wait till Monday and you shall see how I'll rasp her," said Goupil, studying the expression of the late post master's face.
    The next day La Bougival carried the following letter to Savinien.
    "I don't know what the dear child has written to you," she said, "but she is almost dead this morning."
    Who, reading this letter to her lover, could fail to understand the sufferings the poor girl had gone through during the night.
      My dear Savinien,—Your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du
  Rouvre, and perhaps she is right. You are placed between a life
  that is almost poverty-stricken and a life of opulence; between
  the betrothed of your heart and a wife in conformity with the
  demands of the world; between obedience to your mother and the
  fulfilment of your own choice—for I still believe that you have
  chosen me. Savinien, if you have now to make your decision I wish
  you to do so in absolute freedom; I give you back the promise you
  made to yourself—not to me—in a moment which can never fade from
  my memory, for it was, like other days that have succeeded it, of
  angelic purity and sweetness. That memory will suffice me for my
  life. If you should persist in your pledge to me, a dark and
  terrible idea would henceforth trouble my happiness. In the midst
  of our privations—which we have hitherto accepted so gayly—you
  might reflect, too late, that life would have been to you a better
  thing had you now conformed to the laws of the world. If you were
  a man to express that thought, it would be to me the sentence of
  an agonizing death; if you did not express it, I should watch
  suspiciously every cloud upon your brow.

  Dear Savinien, I have preferred you to all else on earth. I was
  right to do so, for my godfather, though jealous of you, used to
  say to me, "Love him, my child; you will certainly belong to each
  other one of these days." When I went to Paris I loved you
  hopelessly, and the feeling contented me. I do not know if I can
  now return to it, but I shall try. What are we, after all, at this
  moment? Brother and sister. Let us stay so. Marry that happy girl
  who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to
  have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish. You will not
  hear of me again. The world will approve of you; I shall never
  blame you—but I shall love you ever. Adieu, then!
    "Wait," cried the young man. Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he scratched off hastily the following reply:—
      My dear Ursula,—Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you
  have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for
  the first time, have failed to understand each other. If you are
  not my wife now, it is solely because I cannot marry without my
  mother's consent. Dear, eight thousand francs a year and a pretty
  cottage on the Loing, why, that's a fortune, is it not? You know
  we calculated that if we kept La Bougival we could lay by half our
  income every year. You allowed me that evening, in your uncle's
  garden, to consider you mine; you cannot now of yourself break
  those ties which are common to both of us.—Ursula, need I tell
  you that I yesterday informed Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I
  were free I could not receive a fortune from a young person whom I
  did not know? My mother refuses to see you again; I must therefore
  lose the happiness of our evenings; but surely you will not
  deprive me of the brief moments I can spend at your window? This
  evening, then—Nothing can separate us.
    "Take this to her, my old woman; she must not be unhappy one moment longer."
    That afternoon at four o'clock, returning from the walk which he always took expressly to pass before Ursula's house, Savinien found his mistress waiting for him, her face a little pallid from these sudden changes and excitements.
    "It seems to me that until now I have never known what the pleasure of seeing you is," she said to him.
    "You once said to me," replied Savinien, smiling,—"for I remember all your words,—'Love lives by patience; we will wait!' Dear, you have separated love