hed hovel where your charms are hidden is no fit
abode for you. A home, worthy in every way to receive you, is at
your service--Rue de Douai. It has been taken in your name, as I am
straightforward in these matters. Think of my proposal, and make what
inquiries you like concerning me. I have not yet attained my majority,
but shall do so in five months and three days, when I shall inherit my
mother's fortune. My father is wealthy, but old and infirm. From four to
six in the afternoon of the next few days I will be in a carriage at the
corner of the Place de Petit Pont.

"GASTON DE GANDELU."

The cynical insolence of the letter, together with its entire want of
form, was a perfect example of the style affected by those loiterers
about town, known to the Parisians as "mashers;" and yet Rose did not
appear at all disgusted by the reception of such an unworthily worded
proposal, but, on the contrary, rather pleased by its contents. "If I
only dared," mused she, with a sigh,--"ah, if I only dared!" For a time
she sat deeply immersed in thought, with her face buried in her hands,
until she was aroused from her meditations by the sound of an active and
youthful step upon the creaking stairs. "He has come back," she gasped;
and with the agile movement of a cat she again concealed the letter
in its hiding-place, and she had scarcely done so, when Paul Violaine
entered the miserable room. He was a young man of twenty-three, of
slender figure, but admirably proportioned. His face was a perfect oval,
and his complexion of just that slight olive tint which betrays the
native of the south of France. A slight, silky moustache concealed his
upper lip, and gave his features that air of manliness in which they
would have otherwise been deficient. His curly chestnut hair fell
gracefully over a brow upon which an expression of pride was visible,
and enhanced the peculiar, restless glance of his large dark eyes. His
physical beauty, which was fully equal to that of Rose, was increased by
an aristocratic air, popularly believed to be only found in the scions
of noble families. The landlady, in her moments of good humor, used to
assert her belief that her lodger was a disguised prince; but if this
were the case, he was certainly one that had been overtaken by poverty.
His dress, to which the closest attention had been paid, revealed the
state of destitution in which he was,--not the destitution which openly
asks for alms, but the hidden pov