e, taken the earliest opportunity to find
out her dear friend and school-fellow to tell her all the doings in the
city.

"It is kind of you, Angelique," replied Amelie, returning her caress
warmly, but without effusion. "We have simply come with our people
to assist in the King's corvee; when that is done, we shall return to
Tilly. I felt sure I should meet you, and thought I should know you
again easily, which I hardly do. How you are changed--for the better, I
should say, since you left off conventual cap and costume!" Amelie could
not but look admiringly on the beauty of the radiant girl. "How handsome
you have grown! but you were always that. We both took the crown
of honor together, but you would alone take the crown of beauty,
Angelique." Amelie stood off a pace or two, and looked at her friend
from head to foot with honest admiration, "and would deserve to wear it
too," added she.

"I like to hear you say that, Amelie; I should prefer the crown of
beauty to all other crowns! You half smile at that, but I must tell the
truth, if you do. But you were always a truth-teller, you know, in the
convent, and I was not so! Let us cease flatteries."

Angelique felt highly flattered by the praise of Amelie, whom she had
sometimes condescended to envy for her graceful figure and lovely,
expressive features.

"Gentlemen often speak as you do, Amelie," continued she, "but, pshaw!
they cannot judge as girls do, you know. But do you really think me
beautiful? and how beautiful? Compare me to some one we know."

"I can only compare you to yourself, Angelique. You are more beautiful
than any one I know," Amelie burst out in frank enthusiasm.

"But, really and truly, do you think me beautiful, not only in your
eyes, but in the judgment of the world?"

Angelique brushed back her glorious hair and stared fixedly in the
face of her friend, as if seeking confirmation of something in her own
thoughts.

"What a strange question, Angelique! Why do you ask me in that way?"

"Because," replied she with bitterness, "I begin to doubt it. I have
been praised for my good looks until I grow weary of the iteration; but
I believed the lying flattery once,--as what woman would not, when it is
repeated every day of her life?"

Amelie looked sufficiently puzzled. "What has come over you, Angelique?
Why should you doubt your own charms? or really, have you found at last
a case in which they fail you?"

Very unlikely, a man would say at f