t?" said Madame
Cremiere. "We feared sometimes we were in your way--but it is such a
long time since our children have paid you their respects; our girls are
old enough now to make dear Ursula's acquaintance."

"Ursula is a little bear, like her name," replied the doctor.

"Let us tame her," said Madame Massin. "And besides, uncle," added the
good housewife, trying to hide her real motive under a mask of economy,
"they tell us the dear girl has such talent for the forte that we are
very anxious to hear her. Madame Cremiere and I are inclined to take her
music-master for our children. If there were six or eight scholars in a
class it would bring the price of his lessons within our means."

"Certainly," said the old man, "and it will be all the better for me
because I want to give Ursula a singing-master."

"Well, to-night then, uncle. We will bring your great-nephew Desire to
see you; he is now a lawyer."

"Yes, to-night," echoed Minoret, meaning to fathom the motives of these
petty souls.

The two nieces pressed Ursula's hand, saying, with affected eagerness,
"Au revoir."

"Oh, godfather, you have read my heart!" cried Ursula, giving him a
grateful look.

"You are going to have a voice," he said; "and I shall give you masters
of drawing and Italian also. A woman," added the doctor, looking at
Ursula as he unfastened the gate of his house, "ought to be educated to
the height of every position in which her marriage may place her."

Ursula grew red as a cherry; her godfather's thoughts evidently
turned in the same direction as her own. Feeling that she was too near
confessing to the doctor the involuntary attraction which led her to
think about Savinien and to center all her ideas of affection upon him,
she turned aside and sat down in front of a great cluster of climbing
plants, on the dark background of which she looked at a distance like a
blue and white flower.

"Now you see, godfather, that your nieces were very kind to me; yes,
they were very kind," she repeated as he approached her, to change the
thoughts that made him pensive.

"Poor little girl!" cried the old man.

He laid Ursula's hand upon his arm, tapping it gently, and took her to
the terraces beside the river, where no one could hear them.

"Why do you say, 'Poor little girl'?"

"Don't you see how they fear you?"

"Fear me,--why?"

"My next of kin are very uneasy about my conversion. They no doubt
attribute it to your influence over me;