ards which my
attention was drawn, and, in a slow distinct voice, dropped, concerning
it, these four observations:--

"She was much beloved.

"She gave herself to God.

"She died young.

"She is still remembered, still wept."

"By that aged lady, Madame Walravens?" I inquired, fancying that I had
discovered in the incurable grief of bereavement, a key to that same
aged lady's desperate ill-humour.

The father shook his head with half a smile.

"No, no," said he; "a grand-dame's affection for her children's
children may be great, and her sorrow for their loss, lively; but it is
only the affianced lover, to whom Fate, Faith, and Death have trebly
denied the bliss of union, who mourns what he has lost, as Justine
Marie is still mourned."

I thought the father rather wished to be questioned, and therefore I
inquired who had lost and who still mourned "Justine Marie." I got, in
reply, quite a little romantic narrative, told not unimpressively, with
the accompaniment of the now subsiding storm. I am bound to say it
might have been made much more truly impressive, if there had been less
French, Rousseau-like sentimentalizing and wire-drawing; and rather
more healthful carelessness of effect. But the worthy father was
obviously a Frenchman born and bred (I became more and more persuaded
of his resemblance to my confessor)--he was a true son of Rome; when he
did lift his eyes, he looked at me out of their corners, with more and
sharper subtlety than, one would have thought, could survive the wear
and tear of seventy years. Yet, I believe, he was a good old man.

The hero of his tale was some former pupil of his, whom he now called
his benefactor, and who, it appears, had loved this pale Justine Marie,
the daughter of rich parents, at a time when his own worldly prospects
were such as to justify his aspiring to a well-dowered hand. The
pupil's father--once a rich banker--had failed, died, and left behind
him only debts and destitution. The son was then forbidden to think of
Marie; especially that old witch of a grand-dame I had seen, Madame
Walravens, opposed the match with all the violence of a temper which
deformity made sometimes demoniac. The mild Marie had neither the
treachery to be false, nor the force to be quite staunch to her lover;
she gave up her first suitor, but, refusing to accept a second with a
heavier purse, withdrew to a convent, and there died in her noviciate.

Lasting anguish, it seems, had take