see the power I had over her. It was cruel, I grant it, but in confessing it I only confess to what nine out of ten men have felt though they may conceal or deny it.

and touching her long fair hair that glistened in the sunshine as she smiled me her adieux. My words had opened a fresh delirious life to her that morning, and translated, for the first time, all the newly dawned emotions that had lately stirred in her heart, while she knew not their name. Poor little Flo

"I soon lost sight of her through a sharp turn of the bridle-path round the rocks, and went on my way thinking of my new love, of how completely I held the threads of her fate in my hands, and how entirely it lay in my power to touch the chords of her young heart into acute pain or into as acute pleasure-with one word of mine, of how utterly I could mould her character, her life, her fate, whether for happiness or misery at my

her unusual beauty, to feel triumph at my entire power, and to feel a tinge of her own poetry and tenderness of feeling stirring in me as I went on under the green, drooping, fanlike boughs of the pines, thinking of Florelle de l'Heris.

"M'sieu! permettre-moi vous parle un p'tit mot ?'

"You will miss me, Florelle?' I asked her. She looked at me reproachfully, wistfully, piteously, the sort of a look I have seen in the eyes of a dying deer; too bewil-relle! dered by this sudden mention of my departure to answer in words. No answer was needed with eyes so eloquent as hers, but I repeated it again. I knew I gave pain, but I knew, too, I should soon console her. Her lips quivered, and the tears gathered in her eyes; she had not known enough of sorrow to have learnt to dissemble it. I asked her if she loved me so much that she was unwilling to bid me farewell. For the first time her eyes sank beneath mine, and a hot, pain-will. I loved her well enough, if only for ful color flushed over her face. Poor child! if ever I have been loved by any woman I was loved by her. Then I woke her heart from its innocent, peaceful rest, with words that spoke a language utterly new to her. I sketched to her a life of love with me that made her cheeks glow and her lips quiver, and her eyes grow dark. She was lovelier in those moments than art could ever attempt to picture! She loved me, and I made her tell me so over and over again. She put her fate unhesitatingly into my hands, and rejoiced in the love I vowed her, little understanding how selfishly I sought her, little thinking, in her ignorance of the passions and evils of the world, that while she re-over its stones. She raised herself from her joiced in the fondness I lavished on her, and work and looked up at me, shading her eyes worshipped me as though I were some supe- from the light-a sunburnt, wrinkled, hardy rior unerring godlike being, she was to me old woman, with her scarlet capulet, her blue only a new toy, only a pursuit of the hour, cloth jacket, and her brown woollen pettia plaything, too, of which I foresaw I should coat, so strange a contrast to the figure I tire! Isn't it Benjamin Constant who says, had lately left under the gateway of the Nid 'Malheureux l'homme qui dans le com- de l'Aigle, that it was difficult to believe mencement d'un amour prévoit avec une them even of the same sex or country. précision cruelle l'heure où il en sera lassé ? 'M'sieu, permettre-moi vous parle un p'tit "As it happened, I had made that morn-mot.' ing an appointment in Luz with some men "She spoke with extreme deference, as I knew, who happened to be passing through she always did, but so earnestly, that I it, and had stopped there that day to go up looked at her in surprise, and stopped to the Pic du Midi the next, so that I could hear what it might be she had to say. She spend only an hour or two with Florelle. I was but a peasant-woman, but she had a took her to her home, parted with her for certain dignity of manner for all that, a few hours, and went down the path. I re- caught, no doubt, from her long service member how she stood looking after me with, and her pride in, the De l'Heris. under the heavy gray stone-work of the gate- "M'sieu, I have no right, perhaps, to adway, the tendrils of the ivy hanging down | dress you; you are a grand seigneur, and I

"Madame Cazot's patois made me look up, almost startled for the moment, though there was nothing astonishing in her appearance there, in her accustomed spot under the shade of a mountain-ash and a great boulder of rock, occupied at her usual task, washing linen in the Gave, as it foamed and rushed

but a poor peasant-woman. Nevertheless, well, I know; at the same time, you are I must speak. I have a charge to which I deucedly impertinent, and I am not accusshall have to answer in the other world to tomed to interference. Have the goodness God and to my master. M'sieu, pardon me to let me pass, if you please.' what I say, but you love Ma'amselle Florelle?' "But she would not move. She folded "I stared at the woman, astonished at her arms across her chest, quivering from her interference and annoyed at her pre-head to foot with passion, her deep-set eyes sumption, and motioned her aside with my flashing like coals under her bushy eyestick. To old Cazot I was scarcely going to brows. speak of my love for Florelle, comme vous concevez. But she placed herself in the path -a narrow path-on which two people could not have stood without one or other going into the Gave, and stopped me resolutely and respectfully, shading her eyes from the sun, and looking steadily at my face.

now, she will love you only the dearer as years go on; and you, you will tire of her, weary of her, want change, fresh beauty, new excitement-you must know that you will, or why should you shrink from the bondage of marriage ?-you will weary of her; you will neglect her first and desert her afterwards; what will be the child's life then? Think! You have done her cruel harm enough now with your wooing words, why will you do her more? What is your love beside hers? If you have heart or conscience you cannot dare to contrast them together; she would give up every thing for you, and you would give up nothing! M'sieu, Florelle de l'Heris is not like the women of your world; she is innocent of evil as the holy saints; those who meet her should guard her from the knowledge, and not lead her to it. Were the Sieur de l'Heris living now, were her house powerful as I have known them, would you have dared or dreamt of seeking her as you do now? M'sieu, he who wrongs trust, betrays hospitality, and takes advantage of that very purity, guilelessness, and want of due protection which should be the best and strongest appeal to every man of chivalry and honor-he, whoever he be, the De l'Heris would have held, as what he is, a coward! Will you not now have pity upon the child, and let her go?"

avenge it, with whom my conscience would not let me dispute it, than it would have done from the lips of any man. I called a coward, by an old peasant-woman! absurd idea enough, wasn't it? It is a more absurd one still that I could not listen to her unmoved, that her words touched me-how or why I could not have told-stirred up in me something of weakness, unselfishness, or chivalrousness-I know not what exactlythat prompted me for once to give up my own egotistical evanescent passions and act to Florelle de 'lHeris as though all the males of her house were on earth to make me render account of my acts; not that for them I should have been likely to care much. At old Cazot's words I shrank for once from my own motives and my own desires, shrank from classing Florelle de l'Heris with the Aspasias of my world, from bringing her down to their level and their life.

"You will have pity on her, m'sieu, and go?' asked old Cazot, more softly, as she looked in my face.

"I did not answer her, but put her aside out of my way, went down the mountain-path to where my horse was left cropping the grass on the level ground beneath a plane-tree, and rode at a gallop into Luz without look. ing back at the gray-turreted ruins of the Nid de l'Aigle.

"And I left Luz that night without seeing Florelle de l'Heris again—a tardy kindness -one, perhaps, as cruel as the cruelty from which old Cazot had protected her. Don't you think I was a fool, indeed, for once in my life to listen to an old woman's prating? Call me so if you like, I shall not dispute it; we hardly know when we are fools, and when wise men! Well! I have not been much given to such weaknesses.

"I have seldom been moved in, never been swayed from, any pursuit or any purpose, whether of love, or pleasure, or ambition; but something in old Cazot's words stirred me strangely, more strangely still from the daring and singularity of the speaker. Her intense love for her young charge gave her pathos, eloquence, and even a certain rude majesty, as she spoke; her bronzed wrinkled features worked with emo- "I left Luz, sending a letter to Florelle, tions she could not repress, and hot tears in which I bade her farewell, and entreated fell over her hard cheeks. I felt that what her to forget me-an entreaty which, while she said was true; that as surely as the night I made it, I felt would not be obeyed-one follows the day would weariness of it succeed which, in the selfishness of my heart, I dare to my love for Florelle, that to the hopital- say, I hoped might not be. I went back to ity I had so readily received I had, in truth, my old diplomatic and social life, to my eusgiven but an ill return, and that I had delib-tomary pursuits, amusements, and ambitions, erately taken advantage of the very ignorance turning over the leaf of my life that conof the world and faith in me which should tained my sojourn in the Pyrenees, as you have most appealed to my honor. I knew turn over the page of a romance to which that what she said was true, and this epithet 'coward' hit me harder from the lips of a woman, on whom her sex would not let me

you will never recur. I went back to Constantinople, and stayed there till April, when I went to London and spent the season. I

woods, if I paid old Cazot's exacted penalty of marriage! I loved Florelle more deeply than I had done twelve months before. L'absence allument les grandes passions et éteignent les petites,' they say. It had been the reverse with me.

"I rode up the bridle-path and passed through the old gateway. There was an unusual stillness about the place; nothing but the roar of the torrent near, and the songs of the birds in the branches speaking in the summer air. My impatience to see Florelle, or to hear her, grew ungovernable. The door stood open. I groped my way through the passage and pushed open the door of the old room. Under the oriel window, where I had seen her first, lay on a little couch Florelle de l'Heris. I saw her again-but how! My God! to the day of my death I shall never forget her face as I saw it then; it was turned from me, and her fair hair streamed over her pillows, but as the sunlight fell upon it, I knew well enough what was written there. Old Cazot, sitting by the bed with her head on her arms, looked up, and came towards me, forcing me back.

66 6

led the same life, occupied myself with my old ambitions, and enjoyed my old pleasures; but I could not forget Florelle as wholly as I wished and tried to do. I had not usually been troubled with such memories; if unwelcome, I could generally thrust them aside; but Florelle I did not forget; the more I saw of other women the sweeter and brighter seemed by contrast her sensitive, delicate nature, unsullied by the world, and unstained by artifice and falsehood. The longer time went on, the more I regretted having given her up-perhaps on no better principle than that on which a child cares most for the toy he cannot have; perhaps because, away from her, I realized that I had lost the purest and the strongest love I had ever won. In the whirl of my customary life I often thought of my poor little Châtelaine sans Château-wondered how she had received my letter, and how far the iron had burnt into her young heart-wondered if she had joined the Sisters of Sainte Marie Purificatrice, or still led her solitary life among the rocks and beech-woods of Nid de l'Aigle. I often thought of her, little as the life I led was conducive to regretful or romantic thoughts. At length, my desire to see her again grew ungovernable. I had never been in the habit of refusing myself what I wished; a man is a fool who does, if "I shook off her grasp, and forcing my his wishes are in any degree attainable. way towards the window, threw myself down And at the end of the season I went over by Florelle's bed; till then I never knew how to Paris, and down again once more into the well I loved her. My voice awoke her from Midi. I reached Luz, lying in the warm her sleep, and, with a wild cry of joy, she golden Pyrenean light as I had left it, and started up, weak as she was, and threw her took once more the old familiar road up the arms round my neck, clinging to me with hills to the Nid de l'Aigle. There had been her little hands, and crying to me delirino outward change from the year that had ously not to leave her while she lived-to flown by; there drooped the fanlike branches stay with her till death should take her; of the pines; there rushed the Gave over where had I been so long? why had I come its rocky bed; there came the silvery sheep- so late? So late!-those piteous words! bell chimes down the mountain-sides; there, As I held her in my arms, unconscious from over hill and wood, streamed the mellow the shock, and saw the pitiless marks that glories of the Southern sunlight. There is something unutterably painful in the sight of any place after one's lengthened absence, wearing the same smile, lying in the same sunlight. Bulwer is right, 'In nature's heart there beats no throb for man.' I rode "What need to tell you more? Florelle on, picturing the flush of gladness that de l'Heris was dying, and I had killed her. would dawn in Florelle's face at the sight of The child that I had loved so selfishly had me, thinking that Mme. Cazot should not loved me with all the concentrated tenderpart me from her again, even, I thought, as ness of her isolated and impassioned naI saw the old gray turrets above the beech-ture: the letter I wrote bidding her fare

You are come at last, to see her die. Look on your work-look well at it-and then go; with my curse upon you!'

disease, the most hopeless and the most cruel, had made on the face that I had left fair, bright, and full of life as any child's, I felt the full bitterness of that piteous reproach, 'Why had I come so late?'

Cavendish raised himself with a laugh, drank down a draught of the Hermitage. but his lips looked white as death as he

"Well! what say you: is the maxim right, y-a-t-il femmes et femmes ? Caramba! why need you have pitched upon that portfolio?-There are the lights in the Acqua d'Oro's palace; we must go, my good fellow, or we shall get into disgrace."

well had given her her death-blow. They folded a page out of his life's history written told me that from the day she received that in characters so painful to him. Such skelletter every thing lost its interest for her. etons dwell in the hearts of most; hands She would sit for hours looking down the need be tender that disentomb them and road to Luz, as though watching wearily for drag out to daylight ashes so mournful and so grievous, guarded so tenaciously, hidden one who never came or kneeling before the so jealously. Each of us is tender over his pictures I had left as before some altar, pray- own, but who does not think his brother's ing to Heaven to take care of me, and bless fit subject for jest, for gibe, for mocking me, and let her see me once again before danse de mort? she died. Consumption had killed her mother in her youth; during the chill winter at the Nid de l'Aigle the hereditary disease settled upon her. When I found her she was dying fast. All the medical aid, all the alleviations, luxuries, resources, that money could procure, to ward off the death I would have given twenty years of my life to avert, I lavished on her, but they were useless; for my consolation they told me that, used a few months earlier, they would have saved her! She lingered three weeks, fading away like a flower gathered before its fullest bloom. Each day was torture to I knew enough of the disease to know from the first there was no hope for her or me. Those long, terrible night-hours, when she lay with her head upon my shoulder, and her little hot, thin hands in mine, while I listened, uncertain whether every breath was not the last, or whether life was not already fled By Heaven! I cannot think of them yet! One of those long summer nights Florelle died; happy with me, loving and forgiving me to the last; speaking to the last of that reunion in which, poor child, she in her innocent faith believed and hoped, according to the promise of her creed!-died with her hands clasped round my neck, and her eyes looking up to mine, till the last ray of light was quenched in them-died while the morning dawn rose in the east and cast a golden radiance on her face, the herald of a day to which she never woke ! "

me.

We went, and Beatrice Acqua d'Oro talked very ardent Italian to him, and the Comtesse Bois de Sandal remarked to me what a bril liant and successful man Lord Cavendish was, but how unimpressionable!-as cold and as glittering as ice. Nothing had ever made him feel, she was quite certain, pretty complimentary nonsense though he often talked. What would the Marchesa and the Comtesse have said, I wonder, had I told them of La Châtelaine sans Château, and that little grave under the Pyrenean beechwoods? So much does the world know of any of us! In the lives of all men are doubled-down pages written on in secret, folded out of sight, forgotten as they make their fellows, only glanced at by themselves other entries in the diary, never read by in some midnight hour of solitude.

Basta! they are painful reading, care amici. Don't you find them so? Let us leave the skeletons in the closet, the pictures in the portfolio, the doubled-down pages in the locked diary, and go to Beatrice Acqua What is Madame Bois de Sandal, née Dashd'Oro's, where the lights are burning gaily. wood, singing in the music-room?

The tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me !

That is the burden of many songs sung in There was a dead silence between us; the this world, for some dead flowers strew most Arno splashed against the wall below, mur-paths, and grass grows over myriad graves, muring its eternal song beneath its bridge, and many leaves are folded down in many while the dark heavy clouds drifted over the lives, I fear. And-retrospection is very sky with a sullen roll of thunder. Caven- idle, my good fellow, and regret is as bad as dish lay back in his chair, the deep shadow the tic, and flirting is deucedly pleasant; the white Hermitage we drank to-night is gone, of the balcony pillar hiding his face from we know, but are there no other bottles left me, and his voice quivered painfully as he of wine every whit as good? Shall we waste spoke the last words of his story. He was our time sighing after spilt lees? Surely silent for many minutes, and so was I, re- not. Je suis philosophe, moi. Et vous, gretting that my careless question had un-monsieur?