Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/80

 look at themselves too long! All I can say is, if he came in mine he must have been nicely caught—my lord Satan. I couldn't have seen him!

You ask me in your kind letter, which they have just read to me, whether it is true that the failure of a banker has ruined my parents. I have heard nothing about it. No, they are rich. I am supplied with every luxury. Everywhere that my hand rests it touches silk and velvet, flowers and precious stuffs. Our table is abundant, and every day my taste is coaxed with dainties. Therefore, you see, Anaïs, that my beloved folks are happily well off.

Write to me, my darling, since you are now back from that aristocratic England, and you have some pity for the poor blind girl.

have no idea, Anaïs, what I am going to tell you! Oh! you will laugh as if you had gone crazy. You will believe that with my sight I must have lost my reason. I have a lover!

Yes, dear; I, the girl without eyes, have a wooer as melting and as importunate as the lover of a duchess. After this, what is to be said? Love, who is as blind as blind can be, undoubtedly owed me this as one of his own kind.

How he got in amongst us I don't know; still less, what he is going to do here. All I can tell you is that he sat on my left at dinner the other day, and that he looked after me with extreme care and attention.

"This is the first time," I said, "that I have had the honour of meeting you."

"True," he answered, "but I know your parents."

"You are welcome," I replied, "since you know how to esteem them—my good angels!"

"They are not the only people," he continued, softly, "for whom I feel affection."

"Oh," I answered, thoughtlessly, "then whom else here do you like?"

"You," said he.

"Me? What do you mean?"

"That I love you."

"Me? You love me?"

"Truly! Madly!"

At these words I blushed, and pulled my scarf over my shoulders. He sat quite silent.

"You are certainly abrupt in your announcement."

"Oh! it might be seen in my regards, my gestures, all my actions."

"That may be, but I am blind. A blind girl is not wooed as others are."

"What do I care about the want of sight?" said he, with a delightful accent of sincerity; "what matters it to me if your eyes are closed to the light? Is not your figure charming, your foot as tiny as a fairy's, your step superb, your tresses long and silky, your skin of alabaster, your complexion carmine, and your hand the colour of the lily?"

He had finished his description before his words ceased sounding in my ears. So then, I had, according to him, a beautiful figure, a fairy foot, a snowy skin, a complexion like a rose, and fair and silky hair. Oh, Anaïs, dear Anaïs, to other girls such a lover, who describes all your perfections, is nothing but a suitor; but to a blind girl he is more than a lover, he is a mirror.

I began again: "Am I really as pretty as all that?"

"I am still far from the reality."

"And what would you have me do?"

"I want you to be my wife."

I laughed aloud at this idea.

"Do you mean it?" I cried. "A marriage between the blind and the seeing, between the day and the night? Why, I should have to put my orange blossoms on by groping! No! no! my parents are rich: a single life has no terrors for me; single I will remain, and take the service of Diana, as they say—and so much the worse for her if she is waited on amiss!"

He went away without saying a word more. It is all the same: he has taught me that I am nice! I don't know how it is that I catch myself loving him a little, Mr. Mirror mine!

, dear Anaïs, what news I have to tell you! What sad and unexpected things befall us in this life! As I tell you what has happened to me, the tears are falling from my darkened eyes.

Several days after my conversation with the stranger whom I call my mirror, I was walking in the garden, leaning on my mother's arm, when she was suddenly and loudly called for. It seemed to me that the maid, in haste to find my mother, betrayed some agitation in her voice.

"What is the matter, mother?" I asked her, troubled without knowing why.