hich evidently meant an end to the intended marriage,
and no settlements for me!"

"Your mother is a very good woman, noble, admirable!" replied the
father, deeply humiliated, though not sorry to hear this confession.

"She told me yesterday that she had your permission to sell her diamonds
so as to give me something to marry on; but I should like her to keep
her jewels, and to find a husband myself. I think I have found the man,
the possible husband, answering to mamma's prospectus----"

"There?--in the Place du Carrousel?--and in one morning?"

"Oh, papa, the mischief lies deeper!" said she archly.

"Well, come, my child, tell the whole story to your good old father,"
said he persuasively, and concealing his uneasiness.

Under promise of absolute secrecy, Hortense repeated the upshot of her
various conversations with her Cousin Betty. Then, when they got home,
she showed the much-talked-of-seal to her father in evidence of the
sagacity of her views. The father, in the depth of his heart, wondered
at the skill and acumen of girls who act on instinct, discerning the
simplicity of the scheme which her idealized love had suggested in the
course of a single night to his guileless daughter.

"You will see the masterpiece I have just bought; it is to be brought
home, and that dear Wenceslas is to come with the dealer.--The man who
made that group ought to make a fortune; only use your influence to get
him an order for a statue, and rooms at the Institut----"

"How you run on!" cried her father. "Why, if you had your own way, you
would be man and wife within the legal period--in eleven days----"

"Must we wait so long?" said she, laughing. "But I fell in love with him
in five minutes, as you fell in love with mamma at first sight. And he
loves me as if we had known each other for two years. Yes," she said in
reply to her father's look, "I read ten volumes of love in his eyes. And
will not you and mamma accept him as my husband when you see that he
is a man of genius? Sculpture is the greatest of the Arts," she cried,
clapping her hands and jumping. "I will tell you everything----"

"What, is there more to come?" asked her father, smiling.

The child's complete and effervescent innocence had restored her
father's peace of mind.

"A confession of the first importance," said she. "I loved him without
knowing him; and, for the last hour, since seeing him, I am crazy about
him."

"A little too crazy!" said the Baron,