distinguish a white
dress.

He advanced softly, and his heart quickened its throbbing when he saw
that he was right.

Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu was seated on a bench beside an old lady,
and was engaged in reading a letter in a low voice.

She must have been greatly preoccupied, since she had not heard
Martial's footsteps approaching.

He was only ten paces from her, so near that he could distinguish
the shadow of her long eyelashes. He paused, holding his breath, in a
delicious ecstasy.

"Ah! how beautiful she is!" he thought. Beautiful? no. But pretty, yes;
as pretty as heart could desire, with her great velvety blue eyes
and her pouting lips. She was a blonde, but one of those dazzling and
radiant blondes found only in the countries of the sun; and from her
hair, drawn high upon the top of her head, escaped a profusion of
ravishing, glittering ringlets, which seemed almost to sparkle in the
play of the light breeze.

One might, perhaps, have wished her a trifle larger. But she had the
winning charm of all delicate and _mignonnes_ women; and her figure was
of exquisite roundness, and her dimpled hands were those of an infant.

Alas! these attractive exteriors are often deceitful, as much and even
more so, than the appearances of a man like the Marquis de Courtornieu.

The apparently innocent and artless young girl possessed the parched,
hollow soul of an experienced woman of the world, or of an old courtier.
She had been so petted at the convent, in the capacity of only daughter
of a _grand seigneur_ and millionnaire; she had been surrounded by so
much adulation, that all her good qualities had been blighted in the bud
by the poisonous breath of flattery.

She was only nineteen; and still it was impossible for any person to
have been more susceptible to the charms of wealth and of satisfied
ambition. She dreamed of a position at court as a school-girl dreams of
a lover.

If she had deigned to notice Martial--for she had remarked him--it was
only because her father had told her that this young man would lift his
wife to the highest sphere of power. Thereupon she had uttered a "very
well, we will see!" that would have changed an enamoured suitor's love
into disgust.

Martial advanced a few steps, and Mlle. Blanche, on seeing him, sprang
up with a pretty affectation of intense timidity.

Bowing low before her, he said, gently, and with profound deference:

"Monsieur de Courtornieu, Mademoiselle, was s