' said I, interrupting
him; 'I guess your purpose. Your first secretary tried to open your deed
box. I know the heart of your second--he might fall in love with your
wife. And can you devote him to destruction by sending him into the
fire? Can any one put his hand into a brazier without burning it?'

"'You are a foolish boy,' replied the Count. 'I will send you well
gloved. It is no secretary of mine that will be lodged in the Rue
Saint-Maur in the little garden-house which I have at his disposal. It
is my distant cousin, Baron de l'Hostal, a lawyer high in office..."

"After a moment of silent surprise, I heard the gate bell ring, and a
carriage came into the courtyard. Presently the footman announced Madame
de Courteville and her daughter. The Count had a large family connection
on his mother's side. Madame de Courteville, his cousin, was the widow
of a judge on the bench of the Seine division, who had left her a
daughter and no fortune whatever. What could a woman of nine-and-twenty
be in comparison with a young girl of twenty, as lovely as imagination
could wish for an ideal mistress?

"'Baron, and Master of Appeals, till you get something better, and this
old house settled on her,--would not you have enough good reasons for
not falling in love with the Countess?' he said to me in a whisper, as
he took me by the hand and introduced me to Madame de Courteville and
her daughter.

"I was dazzled, not so much by these advantages of which I had never
dreamed, but by Amelie de Courteville, whose beauty was thrown into
relief by one of those well-chosen toilets which a mother can achieve
for a daughter when she wants to see her married.

"But I will not talk of myself," said the Consul after a pause.

"Three weeks later I went to live in the gardener's cottage, which
had been cleaned, repaired, and furnished with the celerity which is
explained by three words: Paris; French workmen; money! I was as much
in love as the Count could possibly desire as a security. Would the
prudence of a young man of five-and-twenty be equal to the part I was
undertaking, involving a friend's happiness? To settle that matter, I
may confess that I counted very much on my uncle's advice; for I had
been authorized by the Count to take him into confidence in any case
where I deemed his interference necessary. I engaged a garden; I devoted
myself to horticulture; I worked frantically, like a man whom nothing
can divert, turning up the soil of