ing him. That glance is now the best reward I have for any good
I do. From that moment I have thought of him incessantly, in spite of
myself. Monsieur Savinien went back to Paris that evening, and I have
not seen him since. The street seems empty; he took my heart away with
him--but he does not know it."

"Is that all?" asked the old man.

"All, dear godfather," she said, with a sigh of regret that there was
not more to tell.

"My little girl," said the doctor, putting her on his knee; "you are
nearly sixteen and your womanhood is beginning. You are now between your
blessed childhood, which is ending, and the emotions of love, which
will make your life a tumultuous one; for you have a nervous system of
exquisite sensibility. What has happened to you, my child, is love,"
said the old man with an expression of deepest sadness,--"love in its
holy simplicity; love as it ought to be; involuntary, sudden, coming
like a thief who takes all--yes, all! I expected it. I have studied
women; many need proofs and miracles of affection before love
conquers them; but others there are, under the influence of sympathies
explainable to-day by magnetic fluids, who are possessed by it in an
instant. To you I can now tell all--as soon as I saw the charming woman
whose name you bear, I felt that I should love her forever, solely and
faithfully, without knowing whether our characters or persons suited
each other. Is there a second-sight in love? What answer can I give to
that, I who have seen so many unions formed under celestial auspices
only to be ruptured later, giving rise to hatreds that are well-nigh
eternal, to repugnances that are unconquerable. The senses sometimes
harmonize while ideas are at variance; and some persons live more by
their minds than by their bodies. The contrary is also true; often minds
agree and persons displease. These phenomena, the varying and secret
cause of many sorrows, show the wisdom of laws which give parents
supreme power over the marriages of their children; for a young girl is
often duped by one or other of these hallucinations. Therefore I do not
blame you. The sensations you feel, the rush of sensibility which has
come from its hidden source upon your heart and upon your mind, the
happiness with which you think of Savinien, are all natural. But,
my darling child, society demands, as our good abbe has told us, the
sacrifice of many natural inclinations. The destinies of men and women
differ. I was a