Strive to be content, de Sigognac, with the purest, truest, most devoted love that ever filled a woman's heart, and do not ask for more.

Is it such an unsatisfactory thing to you," she added, with a bright smile, "to be adored by a girl that several men have had the bad taste to declare charming?
Why, even the Duke of Vallombreuse himself professes that he would be proud of it." "But to give yourself to me so absolutely, and to refuse yourself to me as absolutely! to mingle such sweet and bitter drops in the same cup--honey and wormwood--and present it to my lips! only you, Isabelle, could be capable of such strange contradictions." "Yes, I AM an odd girl," she replied, "and therein I resemble my poor mother; but such as I am you must put up with me.

If you should persist in persecuting me, I know well how I could elude and escape you, and where I could hide myself from you so that you would never be able to find me.

But there will be no need of that, we will not talk of it; our compact is made.

Let it be as I say, de Sigognac, and let us be happy together while we may.