t sentiment, and during chief part of the night she evolved the
most brilliant pictures from the dreams with which she had fed her
hopes. At last, thanks to chance, to which she had so often
appealed, Emilie could now see something very unlike a chimera at the
fountain-head of the imaginary wealth with which she gilded her married
life. Ignorant, as all young girls are, of the perils of love and
marriage, she was passionately captivated by the externals of marriage
and love. Is not this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like
all the feelings of extreme youth--sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert
a fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inexperienced as to
trust their own judgment to take care of their future happiness?

Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had hastened to
Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard of an elegant little villa,
the young man he had so determinedly insulted the day before, he went up
to him with the pressing politeness of men of the old court.

"Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should have a brush,
at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or the grandson, of one of my
best friends. I am a vice-admiral, monsieur; is not that as much as to
say that I think no more of fighting a duel than of smoking a cigar?
Why, in my time, no two young men could be intimate till they had seen
the color of their blood! But 'sdeath, sir, last evening, sailor-like,
I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I ran you down. Shake
hands; I would rather take a hundred rebuffs from a Longueville than
cause his family the smallest regret."

However coldly the young man tried to behave to the Comte de Kergarouet,
he could not resist the frank cordiality of his manner, and presently
gave him his hand.

"You were going out riding," said the Count. "Do not let me detain you.
But, unless you have other plans, I beg you will come to dinner to-day
at the Villa Planat. My nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is
essential that you should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make up to you
for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the prettiest women
in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clearing! I am fond of young
people, and I like to see them happy. Their happiness reminds me of the
good times of my youth, when adventures were not lacking, any more
than duels. We were gay dogs then! Nowadays you think and worry over
everything, as though there had never be