plant yesterday in the garden?"

"Mignonette, sweet-peas, balsams--"

"And the last were larkspur?"

She fell on her knees.

"Do not terrify me!" she exclaimed. "Oh you must have been here--you
were here, were you not?"

"Am I not always with you?" replied the doctor, evading her question, to
save the strain on the young girl's mind. "Let us go to your room."

"Your legs are trembling," she said.

"Yes, I am confounded, as it were."

"Can it be that you believe in God?" she cried, with artless joy,
letting fall the tears that gathered in her eyes.

The old man looked round the simple but dainty little room he had given
to his Ursula. On the floor was a plain green carpet, very inexpensive,
which she herself kept exquisitely clean; the walls were hung with a
gray paper strewn with roses and green leaves; at the windows, which
looked to the court, were calico curtains edged with a band of some pink
material; between the windows and beneath a tall mirror was a pier-table
topped with marble, on which stood a Sevres vase in which she put her
nosegays; opposite the chimney was a little bureau-desk of charming
marquetry. The bed, of chintz, with chintz curtains lined with pink, was
one of those duchess beds so common in the eighteenth century, which had
a tuft of carved feathers at the top of each of the four posts, which
were fluted on the sides. An old clock, inclosed in a sort of monument
made of tortoise-shell inlaid with arabesques of ivory, decorated the
mantelpiece, the marble shelf of which, with the candlesticks and
the mirror in a frame painted in cameo on a gray ground, presented a
remarkable harmony of color, tone, and style. A large wardrobe, the
doors of which were inlaid with landscapes in different woods (some
having a green tint which are no longer to be found for sale) contained,
no doubt, her linen and her dresses. The air of the room was redolent of
heaven. The precise arrangement of everything showed a sense of order, a
feeling for harmony, which would certainly have influenced any one, even
a Minoret-Levrault. It was plain that the things about her were dear
to Ursula, and that she loved a room which contained, as it were, her
childhood and the whole of her girlish life.

Looking the room well over that he might seem to have a reason for
his visit, the doctor saw at once how the windows looked into those
of Madame de Portenduere. During the night he had meditated as to
the course he ought to p