. "You'll see it." Another rest. "You see--this matter has
been kept quiet so far. I don't want any one--else to know--anything
about it." He sighed audibly and looked as though he had gone to sleep,
but whispered again, with his eyes closed--"'specially on culprit's
own account."

Frowenfeld was silent: but the invalid was waiting for an answer, and,
not getting it, stirred peevishly.

"Do you wish me to go to-night?" asked the apothecary.

"To-morrow morning. Will you--?"

"Certainly, Doctor."

The invalid lay quite still for several minutes, looking steadily at his
friend, and finally let a faint smile play about his mouth,--a wan
reminder of his habitual roguery.

"Good boy," he whispered.

Frowenfeld rose and straightened the bedclothes, took a few steps about
the room, and finally returned. The Doctor's restless eye had followed
him at every movement.

"You'll go?"

"Yes," replied the apothecary, hat in hand; "where is it?"

"Corner Bienville and Bourbon,--upper river corner,--yellow one-story
house, doorsteps on street. You know the house?"

"I think I do."

"Good-night. Here!--I wish you would send that black girl in here--as
you go out--make me better fire--Joe!" the call was a ghostly whisper.

Frowenfeld paused in the door.

"You don't mind my--bad manners, Joe?"

The apothecary gave one of his infrequent smiles.

"No, Doctor."

He started toward Number 19 rue Bienville, but a light, cold sprinkle
set in, and he turned back toward his shop. No sooner had the rain got
him there than it stopped, as rain sometimes will do.

CHAPTER XXII

WARS WITHIN THE BREAST

The next morning came in frigid and gray. The unseasonable numerals
which the meteorologist recorded in his tables might have provoked a
superstitious lover of better weather to suppose that Monsieur Danny,
the head imp of discord, had been among the aerial currents. The
passionate southern sky, looking down and seeing some six thousand to
seventy-five hundred of her favorite children disconcerted and
shivering, tried in vain, for two hours, to smile upon them with a
little frozen sunshine, and finally burst into tears.

In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say, the sky was closely
imitating the simultaneous behavior of Aurora Nancanou. Never was pretty
lady in cheerier mood than that in which she had come home from Honore's
counting-room. Hard would it be to find the material with which to build
again the c