heath blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off and
strewing on the floor; her arms, bare to the elbow, brown,
and modelled after those of the Arlesian Venus, moved with a
kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with
her arched and supple foot, so as to display the pure and
full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton, gray
and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated
in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow
on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty,
or two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in
which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned
her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young
girl controlled his look.

"You see, Mercedes," said the young man, "here is Easter
come round again; tell me, is this the moment for a
wedding?"

"I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really
you must be very stupid to ask me again."

"Well, repeat it, -- repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at
last believe it! Tell me for the hundredth time that you
refuse my love, which had your mother's sanction. Make me
understand once for all that you are trifling with my
happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you. Ah, to
have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercedes,
and to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my
existence!"