"'Tis useless," said Mlle de Tricotrin at last, rousing herself with a lazy toss of her arms; "I can sleep no more."
"Is it thinking of Trecenito that keeps you awake?" asked Penelophon, as her mistress sat up on the divan, and she kneeled at her feet to put on her dainty slippers.
"Hush! hush! my girl; a maid must not speak of such things to her mistress."
"Forgive me, madam, for indeed I meant no harm," said Penelophon, pausing in her work and looking up wistfully.
"And you did no harm," replied her mistress. "Yes, you may speak of this to me. I like to hear you, for you are maid and friend in one. Yes, child," she went on, taking the sweet upturned face in her hand caressingly, "you are the only woman I ever loved; the only friend I ever had."
She sank back wearily upon the divan, and Penelophon stooped and kissed in deep devotion the little white foot she held in her hand before she hid it in the slipper.
"Why do you do that, child?" asked her mistress.
"I don't know," answered Penelophon; "but you are so kind, and I am so happy, and you love Trecenito so."
The girls great dark eyes were brimming with tears as she looked up, and her mistress saw them. "Why, child," she said, "you love him too!"
"No, no," said Penelophon eagerly, a faint blush tinting her pale face. "I do not love him. He is high above where my love can reach. I adore him and worship him, and it is you I love because you love him. There is no one but you in the wide world whom such a man as he could love. It is only such a one as you who can know how to love him, and that is why you are so dear to me. You are the sweet saint that helps me to reach the throne of my heaven. It is like worship to tire your hair, and dress you, and send you away in all your beauty to make him glad. You are the prayers I say to him, and the hymns I sing, and the sweet incense I offer to my god."
"My child, my child," said her mistress in a hushed voice, as of one who speaks in some vast, solemn cathedral, "whence and what are you? It is only the angels who love like that. Surely it was one of them who whispered in my ear that I should ask him to give you to me."
"Yes," answered the maid, "and it was surely one that brought you to him, because they knew how good he would be to me. 'He must not wait for paradise,' they said. 'We will bring him a wife as bright and pure and beautiful as the heavens, and he shall have a paradise on earth.' So they brought you to him, and they will show him the sunshine in your face, and the blue sky that slumbers in your eyes; he shall feel the warm glow of your lips, and know it is the spirit of life; he shall hear the murmur of your voice, and know it is the echo of the prayers which the saints have prayed."