evening before and a morning after, giving him two nights under the same roof with Renee, something of a resemblance to three days of

rn transfigured. Not half so well would his native land have pleaded for the forgiveness of a British damsel who had wrecked a young man's immoderate first love. That glorified self-love requires the touch upon imagination of strangeness and an unaccustomed grace, to subdue it and make it pardon an outrage to its temples and altars, and its happy reading of the heavens, the earth

der of memory at the thought of her not solely lost to him but possessed by another, it did but quicken a hunger that was three parts curiosity to see how she who had suffered this bore the change; how like or unlike she might be to the extinct Renee; what traces she kept of the face he had known. Her tears were startling, but tears tell of a mood, they do not tell the story of the years; and it was that story he had such eagerness to read in one brief revelation: an eagerness born only of the last few hours, and broken by fears of a tarnished aspect; these again being partly hopes of a coming disillusion that would restore him his independence and ask him only for pity. The slavery of the love of a woman chained like Renee

opportunity of studying her. An English Navy List, solitary on a shelf, and laid within it an extract of a paper announcing the return of the Ariadne to port, ex

ed if she rea

ed to me by M. Vivian Ducie, of your

ing pale gold ornaments. She was now dressed without one decoration of gold or jewel,

tears? They were the living eyes of a brilliant unembarrassed

surrendered to the handsomest young man in France. The effort to recover the younger face gave him a de

ft of speech! Renee's gift of speech counted unnumbered strings which she played on with a grace that clothed the skill, and was her natural endowment-an art perfected by the education of the wor

nuities and feminine silk-flashes of meaning; not if she led you to match her fine quick perceptions with more or less of the discreet concordance of the violoncello accompanying the viol. It is not high flying, which usually ends in heavy falling. You quit the level of earth no more than two birds that chase from bush t

t of this flower of womanhood. He did not see it appearing or present, but vanishing like the faint ray in the rosier. Nay, the blot of her faithlessness underwen

th thinking instantly of dark death when an ordinary illness befalls them; and it may be so or not: but it is positive that the gallant man of the world, if he is in the sensitive condition, and not yet established as the lord

The loveliest? The very loveliest in the purity of her French style-the woman to challenge England for

for him, it was over the shores he had left behind, while Renee had really nothing to do with warning or rescuing, or with imperilling; she welcomed him simply to a holiday in her society.

Beauchamp suffered himself to be unjust to graver England, and lost the strength she would have given him to resist a bewitchment. The case with him was, that his apprenticeship was new; he ha

n his bed, the glove was a principal actor in ev

den between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its winding line in the arms of trenched meadows. The high land on either side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls of hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to the three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking n

ssed:-'You are looking for my

he had been introduced overnight-a lady of

him be on his guard, and he stated that he was looking for Madame de Rouaillout

fray remarked. 'You will not miss her lo

for I go to-morro

aising Renee's goodness. He kept her to it with lively interrogations, in the manner of a, guil

eauty?' Madame d'Auffray inquired: an

ht it would b

here speaking is fencing; the race being little famous

d nothing to conceal; and where he was reserved, that is, in speaking of the developed beauty and grace of Renee, he was transparent. She read the sort of man he was; she could also hazard a guess as to the man's present state. She ventured to think him comparatively harmless-for the hour: for she was not the woman to be hoodwinked by man's dark nature because she inclined to think well of a particular man; nor was she one to trust to any man subject to temptation. The wisdom of the Frenchwoman's fortieth year forbade it. A land where the war b

for your leaving us to

ay, it is impe

vice in Africa. My brother, I need not say, will deplore the mischance which has prevented him from welcoming you. I have telegraphed to him; he is at one of the Baths in Germ

ey the proper expressions of

d Roland, your old comr

eir disappointm

n hour at Rouen on my w

eur was aware of the shor

ioned it to Mad

the grief of a friend: Rene

me use to Madame la Marquise. She

t or not it would have been the same: she and I have no secrets. She was, I may tell you, strictly unable to write

ticularly

Did you take him to

a French jerk o

ishman may be just such an ex-lover, uninflammable by virtue of his blood's native coldness; endued with the frozen vanity called pride, which does not seek to be revenged. Under wary espiona

proof of her consummate astuteness, Renee had no secrets and had absolute liberty. And hitherto no man could build a boast on her rep

one of the garden bridges to intercept her. She started out of some deep meditation, and raised her whip hand to

me d'Auffray, 'that M. Bea

ered hardly with a to

les, caressed her horse, and sent him off with

ery soon; but M. Beau

at have we to in

. Beauchamp why he was invited to

hadowy spheres of surprise and pain to resolution. S

in the essence, without a commencement or an ending. She had in fact but two or three hurried minutes before the breakfast

ing of invitation possible. Owing to his detention by the storm, M. d'Henriel had won the bet, and now insisted o

ping the passions? Calmer than they, but unable to command them, and guessing that Renee's errand of the mornin

M. Ducie, who assured us you must be with an uncle in your county of Sussex. Of course we ran the risk of the letter missing you, but the chance was worth a glove. Can you believe it, M. Beauchamp? it was I, old woman as I am, I who provoked the silly wager. I have long desired to meet you; and we have little society here, we are desperate with loneliness, half mad with our whims. I said, that if you were what I had heard of you, you would come to us at a word. They dared Madame la Mar

od divided between a sense of the bubbling shallowness of the life about him,

two,' he said, 'if I can

an amicable chance. I will send him word that you await him; at least, that you defer your departure as long as possible. Ah! now you perceive, M. Beauchamp, n

oddly entangled, and the dream of his holiday had fled like mo