thout a certain elegance, had
something meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin-legged
chairs. There was in the apartment that air which bespeaks the struggle
for appearances,--that struggle familiar to those of limited income and
vain aspirings, who want the taste which smooths all inequalities and
gives a smile to home; that taste which affection seems to prompt,
if not to create, which shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless
trifles, each a grace. No sign was there of the household cares or
industry of women. No flowers, no music, no embroidery-frame, no
work-table. Lucretia had none of the sweet feminine habits which betray
so lovelily the whereabout of women. All was formal and precise, like
rooms which we enter and leave,--not those in which we settle and dwell.

Lucretia herself is changed; her air is more assured, her complexion
more pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm and pronounced.

Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of man. The
down shades his lip. His dress, though showy and theatrical, is no
longer that of boyhood. His rounded cheek has grown thin, as with the
care and thought which beset the anxious step of youth on entering into
life.

Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers; both from time to time
glanced fearfully at the door; both felt that they belonged to a hearth
round which smile not the jocund graces of trust and love and the
heart's open ease.

"But," said Gabriel,--"but if you would be safe, my father must have no
secrets hid from you."

"I do not know that he has. He speaks to me frankly of his hopes, of the
share he has in the discovery of the plot against the First Consul, of
his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the Breton."

"Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your acuteness assists
his own. Such secrets belong to his public life, his political schemes;
with those he will trust you. It is his private life, his private
projects, you must know."

"But what does he conceal from me? Apart from politics, his whole mind
seems bent on the very natural object of securing intimacy with his rich
cousin, M. Bellanger, from whom he has a right to expect so large an
inheritance."

"Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father."

"He has bad health."

"No," said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange smile, "he has not
bad health; but he may not be long-lived."

"How do you mean?" asked Lucretia, sink