py for the sake of being comforted by
you. But, precious as your sympathy is to me, I cannot allow you to
expend your emotion upon an imaginary grief. No, my heart is not broken,
but, on the contrary, more alive, more vigorous than before. And if I
should tell you what miracle has preserved it, what talisman--"

He placed before her eyes a little oval frame surrounding a profile
without shading, a simple pencil sketch in which she recognized herself,
surprised to find that she was so pretty, as if reflected in the magic
mirror of Love. Tears came to her eyes, although she knew not why,--an
open spring whose pulsing flood caused her chaste heart to beat fast.

"This portrait belongs to me. It was made for me. But now, as I am on
the point of going away, I am assailed by a scruple. I prefer not to
keep it except from your own hands. So take it, and if you find a
worthier friend, one who loves you with a deeper, truer love than mine,
I authorize you to give it to him."

She had recovered from her confusion, and replied, looking de Gery in
the face with affectionate gravity:

"If I listened to nothing but my heart, I should not hesitate to answer
you; for, if you love me as you say you do, I am sure that I love you no
less. But I am not free, I am not alone in life,--look!"

She pointed to her father and sisters who were motioning to them in the
distance and hurrying to overtake them.

"Even so! And I?" said Paul eagerly. "Have I not the same duties, the
same burdens? We are like two widowed heads of families. Will you not
love mine as dearly as I love yours?"

"Do you mean it? Is it true? You will let me stay with them? I shall be
Aline to you and still be Grandmamma to all our children? Oh! then,"
said the dear creature, beaming with joy and radiance, "then here is my
picture, I give it to you. And, with it, all my heart, and forever."

XVIII.

THE JENKINS PEARLS.

About a week after his adventure with Moessard,--a new complication in
his sadly muddled affairs,--Jansoulet, on leaving the Chamber one
Thursday, ordered his coachman to drive him to the hotel de Mora. He had
not been there since the fracas on Rue Royale, and the idea of appearing
before the duke caused something of the same panicky sensation beneath
his tough epidermis that a schoolboy feels on being summoned before the
master after a scuffle in the class-room. However, it was necessary to
submit to the embarrassment of that first interview