A Woman's Will Part 69

"He has say you were better left. _Mon Dieu_, but I have been the angel these past months! I must despair, you are so much decided; and when I despair the most, Jack will always say, 'Wait and you shall see that she sails never from Genoa.' But I was most unhappy. And my work, my work that should have gone so greatly out to the world this summer!

_Perdu_--lost--lost!"

She laid her cheek softly against his.

"But that music is not really gone," she whispered; "it will find a voice again, a better voice, because--"

She kissed him fondly.

"Oh, of a surety," he said, returning the kiss twofold; "do not think that I repent me of one second lost in your winning. _Mon Dieu_, what life was left me if I had get you not? That I will never bear to remember for a second. But you must now say that you forgive the man who did write the letter from Zurich. You will, will you not?"

"Yes," she declared fervently; "I forgive him for ever and always. I even," she smiled into his eyes,--"I even feel obliged to him for the trouble that he took. But," she added, "I truly never expected to learn in the end that ours was simply a '_mariage des convenances_' after all!"

"It was as the marriage of a queen," he laughed, taking her hand within his own and raising it reverently to his lips; "with such a marriage every one knows, everything is quite well ready, the lawyers are done, all the papers are signed, and then it is last of all that they go to the queen, and the queen does then say 'Yes.'"