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456 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
window, in which a young lady sits wide awake by the side of her
uncle and aunt ? These perhaps are asleep ; but she is not. Ah !
she is thinking of another journey! that blissful one from Boulogne,
when he was there yonder in the imperial, by the side of the conductor.
When the MacWhirter party had come to the diligence
office, how her little heart had beat! How she had looked under
the lamps at all the people lounging about the court! How she
had listened when the clerk called out the names of the passengers;
and, mercy, what a fright she had been in, lest he should be there
after all, while she stood yet leaning on her father's arm! But
there was no ________ well, names, I think, need scarcely be mentioned.
There was no sign of the individual in question. Papa kissed her,
and sadly said good-bye. Good Madame Smolensk came with an
adieu and an embrace for her dear Miss, and whispered, " Courage,
mon enfant," and then said, "Hold, I have brought you some
bonbons." There they were in a little packet. Little Charlotte
put the packet into her little basket. Away goes the diligence,
but the individual had made no sign.
Away goes the diligence; and every now and then Charlotte
feels the little packet in her little basket. What does it contain
_________ oh, what? If Charlotte could but read with her heart, she
would see in that little packet—the sweetest bonbon of all perhaps
it might be, or, ah me! the bitterest almond! Through the night
goes the diligence, passing relay after relay. Uncle Mac sleeps. I
think I have said he snored. Aunt Mac is quite silent, and Char
sits plaintively with her lonely thoughts and her bonbons, as miles,
hours, relays pass.
" These ladies will they descend and take a cup of coffee, a cup
of bouillon ?" at last cries a waiter at the coupé door, as the carriage
stops in Orleans. " By all means a cup of coffee," says Aunt Mac.
"The little Orleans wine is good," cries Uncle Mac. "Descendons!"
" This way, madame," says the waiter. " Charlotte my love, some
coffee?"
"I will—I will stay in the carriage. I don't want anything,
thank you," says Miss Charlotte. And the instant her relations
are gone, entering the gate of the " Lion Noir," where, you know,
are the Bureaux des Messageries Lafitte, Caillard et C ie —I say, on
the very instant when her relations have disappeared, what do you
think Miss Charlotte does ?
She opens that packet of bonbons with fingers that tremble—
tremble so, I wonder how she could undo the knot of the string (or
do you think she had untied that knot under her shawl in the dark?
I can't say. We never shall know). Well ; she opens the packet.
She does not care one fig for the lollipops, almonds, and so forth.