rine went to the piano, and entertained
her audience with music. She played very well, indeed. She had had
plenty of piano-forte-drudgery at the Convent school of the Grey Nuns in
her beloved Montreal. She sung for them in the voice that suited her
mignonne face, a full, rich contralto.

She sang gayly, with eyes that sparkled, the national song of Lower
Canada: "_Vive la Canadienne_," and the New York lawyer went up to bed
that first night with its ringing refrain in his ears:

"Vive la Canadienne et ses beaux yeux,
Et ses beaux yeux tous doux,
Et ses beaux yeux."

"Ah!" Richard Gilbert thought, "well may the _habitans_ sing and extol
the _beaux yeux_ of their fair countrywomen, if those bright eyes are
one-half as lovely as Norine Bourdon's."

He stayed his fortnight out at the old red farm-house; and he who ran
might read the foolish record. He, a sober, practical man of
thirty-five, who up to the present had escaped unscarred, had fallen a
victim at last to a juvenile disease in its most malignant form. And
juvenile disorders are very apt to be fatal when caught in mature years.
He was in love with a tall child of seventeen, a foolish little French
girl, who looked upon him with precisely the same affection she felt for
Uncle Reuben.

"What a fool I am," the lawyer thought, moodily, "to dream a child like
that can ever be my wife? A sensible, practical young woman of
seven-and-twenty is nearer your mark, Richard Gilbert. What do I know of
this girl, except that she has silken ringlets and shining black eyes,
and all sorts of charming, childish, bewitching ways. I will not make an
idiot of myself at my age. I will go away and forget her and my folly. I
was a simpleton ever to come."

He kept his word. He went away with his story untold. He bade them all
good-bye, with a pang of regret more keen than any he had ever felt
before in his life. Perhaps the little brown hand of mademoiselle
lingered a thought longer than the others in his; perhaps his parting
look into those _beaux yeux_ was a shade more wistful. He was going for
good now--to become a wise man once more, and he might never look into
those wonderful, dark eyes more.

Norine was sorry, very sorry, and said so with a frank regret her
middle-aged lover did not half like. He might be unskilled in the
mysteries of the tender passion, but he had an inward conviction that
love would never speak such candid words, never look back at him wit