the letter he had just received as in anywise concerned her to know.

"See you and Marguerite to the preparations; let everything, at least, be neat. He knows, as all the world does, that I am miserably poor; and we can't make this place look less beggarly than it is; but we must make the best of it. What can one do with a pension of eight hundred francsbah!"

The latter part of this speech was muttered in bitter abstraction.

"The pension is too small, sir." He looked at her with something like a sneer.

"It is too small, sir, and ought to be increased."

"Who says so?"

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Marguerite has often said so, sir, and I believe it. If you will petition the king he will give you something worthy of your rank."

You are a pair of wiseheads, truly. It cost the exertions of powerful friends, while I still had some, to get that pittance; were I to move in the matter now, it is more like to lead to its curtailment than extension."

"Yes, but the king admires beauty, and I am beautiful," she said, with a blush that was at once the prettiest, the boldest, and yet the purest thing imaginable; "and I will present your petition myself."

Her father looked at her for a moment with a gaze of inquiring wonder, which changed into a faint, abstracted smile; but he rose abruptly from his seat with a sort of shrug, as if it were chill, and, muttering his favourite exorcism, 'Apage sathanas!" walked with a flurried step up and down the room. His face was flushed, and there was something in its expression which forbid her hazarding another word.

It was not until nearly half an hour had elapsed that the Visconte suddenly exclaimed, as if not a second had interposed

"Well, Lucille, it is not quite impossible; but you need not mention it to Marguerite."

He then signed to her to leave him, intending, according to his wont, to find occupation for his solitary hours in the resources of his library. This library was contained in an old chest ; consisted of some score of shabby volumes of all sizes, and was, in truth, a queer mixture. It comprised, among other tomes, a Latin Bible and a mis

sal, in intimate proximity with two or three other volumes of that gay kind which even the Visconte de Charrebourg would have blushed and trembled to have seen in the hands of his child. It resembled thus the heterogeneous furniture of his own mind, with an incongruous ingredient of superinduced religion; but, on the whole, unpresentable and unclean. He took up the wellthumbed Vulgate, in which, of late years, he had read a good deal, but somehow, it did not interest him at that moment. He threw it back again, and suffered his fancy to run riot among schemes more exciting and, alas! less guiltless. His daughter's words had touched an evil chord in his

heart she had unwittingly uncaged the devil that lurked within him; and this guardian angel from the pit was playing, in truth, very ugly pranks with his ambitious imagination.

Lucille called old Marguerite to her bed-room, and there made the astonishing disclosure of the promised visit; but the old woman, though herself very fussy in consequence, perceived no corresponding excitement in her young mistress; on the contrary, she was sad and abstracted.

"Do you remember," said Lucille, after a long pause, "the story of the fair demoiselle of Alsace you used to tell me long ago? How true her lover was, and how bravely he fought through all the dangers of witchcraft and war to find her out again and wed her, although he was a noble knight, and she, as he believed, but a peasant's daughter. Marguerite, it is a pretty story. I wonder if gentlemen are as true of heart now?"

"Ay, my dear, why not? love is love always; just the same as it was of old is it now, and will be while the world wags."

And with this comforting assurance their conference ended.

The very next day came the visit of Monsieur le Prun and his niece. The Fermier-General was old and ugly, there is no denying it; he had a shrewd, penetrating eye, moreover, and in the lines of his mouth were certain unmistakeable indications of habitual command. When his face was in repose, indeed, its character was on the whole forbidding. But in repose it seldom was, for he smiled and grimaced with an industry that was amazing.

His niece was a pretty little fair

haired girl of sixteen, with something sad and even funeste in her countenance. The fragile timidity of the little blonde contrasted well with the fire and energy that animated the handsome features of her new acquaintance. Julie St. Pierre, for that was her name, seemed just as unconscious of Lucille's deficient toilet as she was herself, and the two girls became, in the space of an hour's ramble among the brakes and bushes of the park, as intimate as if they had spent all their days together. Monsieur le Prun, meanwhile, conversed affably with the Visconte, whom he seemed to take a pleasure in treating with a deference which secretly flattered alike his pride and his vanity. He told him, moreover, that the contract for the purchase of the Charrebourg estate was already completed, and pleased himself with projecting certain alterations in the Visconte's humble residence, which would certainly have made it a far more imposing piece of architecture than it ever had been. All his plans, however, were accompanied with so many submissions to the Visconte's superior taste, and so many solicitations of "permission," and so many delicate admissions of an ownership, which both parties knew to be imaginary, that the visiter appeared in the attitude rather of one suing for than conferring a favour. Add to all this that the FermierGeneral had the good taste to leave his equipage at the park gate, and trudged on foot beside his little niece, who, in rustic fashion, was mounted on a donkey, to make his visit. No wonder, then, that when the Croesus and his little niece took their departure, they left upon the mind of the old Visconte an impression which (although, for the sake of consistency, he was still obliged to affect his airs of hauteur) was in the highest degree favourable.

The acquaintance thus commenced was not suffered to languish. Scarce a day passed without either a visit or a billet, and thus some five or six weeks passed.

Lucille and her new companion became more and more intimate; but there was one secret recorded in the innermost tablet of her heart which she was too proud to disclose even to her gentle friend. For a day-days-a week-a fortnight after her interview with Du Bois, she lived in hope that every hour might present his handsome

form at the cottage door to declare himself, and, with the Visconte's sanction, press his suit. Every morning broke with hope, every night brought disappointment with its chill and darkness, till hope expired, and feelings of bitterness, wounded pride, and passionate resentment succeeded. What galled her proud heart most was the fear that she had betrayed her fondness to him. To be forsaken was hard enough to bear, but to the desolation of such a loss the sting of humiliation superadded was terrible.

One day the rumble of coach-wheels was heard upon the narrow, broken road which wound by the Visconte's cottage. A magnificent equipage, glittering with gold and gorgeous colours, drawn by four noble horses worthy of Cinderella's state-coach, came rolling and rocking along the track. The heart of Lucille beat fast under her little bodice as she beheld its approach. The powdered servants were of course to open the carriage-door, and Du Bois himself, attired in the robes of a prince, was to spring from within and throw himself passionately at her feet. In short, she felt that the denouement of the fairy tale was at hand.

The coach stopped-the door opened, and Monsieur Le Prun descended, and handed his little niece to the ground; Lucille wished him and Du Bois both in the galleys.

He was more richly dressed than usual, more ceremonious, and if possible more gracious. He saluted Lucille, and after a word or two of common-place courtesy, joined the old Visconte, and they shortly entered the old gentleman's chamber of audience together, and there remained for more than an hour. At the end of of that time they emerged together, both a little excited as it seemed. The Fermier-General was flushed like a scarlet withered apple, and his black eyes glowed and flashed with an unusual agitation. The Visconte too was also flushed, and he carried his head a little back, with an unwonted air of reserve and importance.

The adieux were made with some little flurry, and the equipage swept away, leaving the spot where its magnificence had just been displayed as bleak and blank as the space on which the pageant of a phantasmagoria has been for a moment reflected.

The old servant of all work was charm

ed with this souvenir of her better days. Monsieur Le Prun had risen immensely in her regard in consequence of the display she had just gloated upon. In the estimation of the devoted Marguerite he was more than a Midas. His very eye seemed to gild everything it fell upon as naturally as the sun radiates his yellow splendour. The blue velvet liveries, the gold-studded harness, the embossed and emblazoned coach, the stately beasts with their tails tied up in great bows of broad blue ribbons, with silver fringe, like an Arcadian beauty's chevelure, the reverential solemnity of the gorgeous lacqueys, the tout ensemble, in short, was overpowering and delightful.

"Well, child," said the Visconte, after he and Lucille had stood for a while in silence watching the retiring equipage, taking her hand in his at the same time, and leading her with a stately gravity along the narrow walk which environed the cottage, "Monsieur Le Prun, it must be admitted, has excellent taste; par bleu, his team would do honour to the royal stables. What a superb equipage! Happy the woman whom fortune will elect to share the splendour of which all that we have just seen is but as a sparkle from the furnace-fortunate she whom Monsieur Le Prun will make his wife."

He spoke with so much emotion, directed a look of such triumphant significance upon his daughter, and pressed her hand so hard, that on a sudden a stupendous conviction, at once horrible and dazzling, burst upon her.

?"

"Monsieur- for the love of God do you mean-do you mean she said, and broke off abruptly.

"Yes, my dear Lucille," he returned with elation, "I do mean to tell you that you you are that fortunate person. It is true you can bring him no wealth, but he already possesses more of that than he knows how to apply. You can, however, bring him what few other women possess, an ancient lineage, an exquisite beauty, and the simplicity of an education in which the seeds of finesse and dissipation have not been sown; in short, the very attributes and qualifications which he most esteems-which he has long sought, and which in conversation he has found irresistible in you. Monsieur Le Prun has entreated me to lay his proposals at your feet, and you of course con

She accompanied him into the cottage; she was walking, as it were, in a wonderful dream; but amidst the confusion of her senses, her perplexity and irresolution, there was a dull sense of pain at her heart, there was a shadowy figure constantly before her; its presence agitated and reproached her, but she had little leisure to listen to the pleadings of a returning tenderness, even had they been likely to prevail with her ambitious heart. Her father rapidly sketched such a letter of complimentary acceptance as he conceived suitable to the occasion and the parties.

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"Read that," he said, placing it before Lucille. Well, that I think will answer. What say you, child?" "Yes, sir," she replied with an ef fort; it is true; he does me indeed great honour; and-and I accept him; and now, sir, I would wish to go and be for a while alone."

"Do so," said her father, again kissing her, for he felt a sort of gratitude toward her as the prime cause of all these comforts and luxuries, whose long despaired of return he now beheld in immediate and certain prospect. Not heeding this unwonted exuberance of tenderness, she hurried to her little bedroom, and sate down upon the side of her bed.

At first she wept passionately, but her girlish volatility soon dried these tears. The magnificent equipage of Monsieur Le Prun swept before her imagination. Her curious and dazzled fancy then took flight in speculations as to the details of all the, as yet, undescribed splendours in reserve. Then she thought of herself married, and mistress of all this great fortune, and her heart beat thick, and she laughed aloud, and clapped her hands in an ecstacy of almost childish exultation.

Next day she received a long visit from Monsieur Le Prun, as her accepted lover. Spite of all his splendour, he had never looked in her

eyes half so old, and ugly, and sinister as now. The marriage, which was sometimes so delightfully full of promise to her vanity and ambition, in his presence most perversely lost all its enchantment, and terrified her, like some great but unascertained danger. It was, however, too late now to recede; and even were she free to do so, it is more than probable that she could not have endured the sacrifice involved in retracting her consent.

The Visconte's little household kept early hours. He himself went to bed almost with the sun; and on the night after this decisive visit for such Monsieur Le Prun's first appearance and acceptation in the character of an affianced bridegroom undoubtedly was—

Lucille was lying awake, the prey of a thousand agitating thoughts, when, on a sudden, rising upon the still night air, came a little melody-alas! too well known-a gay and tender song, chanted sweetly. Had the voice of Fate called her, she could not have started more suddenly upright in her bed, with eyes straining, and parted lips-one hand pushing back the rich clusters of hair, and collecting the sound at her ear, and the other extended toward the distant songster, and softly marking the time of the air. She listened till the song died away, and covering her face with her hands, she threw herself down upon the pillow, and sobbing desolately, murmured-" too late!-loo late!"

The visits of the happy Fermier-General occurred, of course, daily, and increased in duration. Meanwhile preparations went forward. The Visconte, supplied from some mysterious source, appeared to have an untold amount of cash. He made repeated excursions to the capital, which for twenty years he had not so much as seen; and handsome dresses, orna. ments, &c., for Lucille, were accompanied by no less important improvements upon his own wardrobe, as well as various accessions to the comforts of their little dwelling-so numerous, indeed, as speedily to effect an almost complete transformation in its character and pretensions.

Thus the time wore on, in a state of excitement, which, though chequered with many fears, was on the whole pleasurable.

Ur

About ten days had passed since the peculiar and delicate relation we have described was established between Lucille and Monsieur Le Prun. gent business had called him away to the city, and kept him closely confined there, so that, for the first time since his declaration, his daily visit was omitted upon this occasion. Had the good Fermier-General known but all, he need not have offered so many apologies, nor laboured so hard to console his lady-love for his involuntary absence. The truth, then, is, as the reader no doubt suspects, Lucille was charmed at finding herself, even for a day, once more her own absolute mistress.

A gay party from Paris, with or ders of admission from the creditors, that day visited the park. In a remote and bosky hollow they had seated themselves upon the turf, and, amid songs and laughter, were enjoying a cold repast. Far away these sounds of mirth were borne on the clear air to Lucille. Alas! when should she laugh as gaily as those ladies, who, with their young companions, were making merry? when again should music speak as of old with her heart, and bear in its chords no tone of reproach and despair? This gay party broke up into groups, and began merrily to ramble towards the great gate, where, of course, their carriages were awaiting them.

Attracted mournfully by their mirth, Lucille rambled onward as they retreated. It was evening, and the sunbeams slanted pleasantly among the trees and bushes, throwing long, soft shadows over the sward, and converting into gold every little tuft, and weed, and knob that broke the irregular sweep of the ground.

She had reached a part of the park with which she was not so familiar. Here several gentle hollows were converging toward the stream, and trees and wild brushwood in fresh abundance clothed their sides, and spread upward along the plain in rich and shaggy exuberance.

From among them, with a stick in his hand, and running lightly in the direction of her father's cottage, Gabriel suddenly emerged.

On seeing her at the end of the irregular vista, which he had just entered, however, he slackened his pace, and dofling his hat, he approached her.

"A message,

quired.

Gabriel?" she in

"Yes, if mademoiselle pleases," said he, blushing all over, like the setting sun. "I was running to the Visconte's house to tell mademoiselle."

"Well, Gabriel, and what is it?" "Why, mademoiselle, a strange lady in the glen desired me to tell Madamoiselle de Charrebourg that she wished to see her."

"But did she say why she desired it, and what she wished to speak to me about?"

"No, mademoiselle."

"Then tell her that Mademoiselle de Charrebourg, knowing neither her name nor her business, declines obeying her summons," she said, haughtily. Gabriel bowed low, and was about to retire on his errand, when she added—

"It was very dull of you, Gabriel, not to ask her what she wanted of me." "Madame, without your permission, I dare not," he replied, with a deeper blush, and a tone at once so ardent and so humble, that Lucille could not forbear a smile of the prettiest good na ture."

"In truth, Gabriel, you are a dutiful boy. But how did you happen

to meet her ?"

"I was returning, mademoiselle, from the other side of the stream, and just when I got into the glen, on turning round the corner of the grey stone, I saw her standing close to me behind the bushes."

"And I suppose you were frightened?" she said, archly.

"No, mademoiselle, indeed; though she was strangely dressed and very pale, but she spoke to me kindly. She asked me my name, and then she looked in my face very hard, as a fortune-teller does, and she told me many strange things, mademoiselle, about myself; some of them I knew, and some of them I never heard before."

"I suppose she is a fortune-teller; and how did she come to ask for me?" "She inquired if the Visconte de Charrebourg still lived on the estate, and then she said, 'Has he not a beautiful daughter called Lucille?' and I, mademoiselle, made bold to answer, • Oh yes, madame, yes, in truth.'”

Poor Gabriel blushed and faltered more than ever at this passage.

"Tell mademoiselle,' she said, 'I have something that concerns her nearly to tell her. Let her know that I am waiting here; but I cannot stay long.' And so she beckoned me away impa tiently, and I, expecting to find you near the house, was running, when ma demoiselle saw me.”

"It is very strange; stay, Gabriel, I will go and speak to her, it is only a step.

The fact was that Lucille's curiosity (as might have been the case with a great many of her sex in a similar situation) was too strong for her, and her pride was forced to bend to its importunity.

"Go you before," she said to Gabriel, who long remembered that evening walk in attendance upon Lucille, as a scene so enchanting and delightful as to be rather a mythic episode than an incident in his life;" and Gabriel," she added, as they entered the cold shadow of the thick evergreens, and felt, she knew not why, a superstitious dread creep over her, "do you wait within call, but so as not to overhear our conversation; you understand

me."

They had now emerged from the dark cover into the glen, and looking downward toward the little stream, at a short distance from them, the figure of the mysterious lady was plainly discernible. She was sitting with her back toward them upon a fragment of rock, under the bough of an old gnarled oak. Her dress was a sort of loose white robe, it might be of flannel, such as invalids in hospitals wear, and a red cloak had slipt from her shoulders, and covered the ground at her feet. Thus solitary and mysterious, she suggested the image of a priestess cowering over the blood of a victim in search of omens.

Lucille approached her with some trepidation, and to avoid coming upon her wholly by surprise she made a little detour, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the features of the stranger, as well as of permitting her to become aware of her approach.

Her appearance, upon a nearer approach, was not such as to reassure Lucille. She was tall, deadly pale, and marked with the small-pox. She had particularly black eye-brows, and awaited the young lady's approach with that ominous smile which ascends no