tty pout, but she
smiled as she looked at the clock and exclaimed joyfully, "At any rate,
I have detained you a quarter of an hour!"

"Good-bye, Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille," said he, with the gentle irony
of love.

She kissed him and saw her lover to the door; when the sound of his
steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see
him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a
parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels on
the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's
gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of the
street had eclipsed this vision.

Five years after Mademoiselle Caroline de Bellefeuille had taken up her
abode in the pretty house in the Rue Taitbout, we again look in on one
of those home-scenes which tighten the bonds of affection between two
persons who truly love. In the middle of the blue drawing-room, in front
of the window opening to the balcony, a little boy of four was making
a tremendous noise as he whipped the rocking-horse, whose two curved
supports for the legs did not move fast enough to please him; his pretty
face, framed in fair curls that fell over his white collar, smiled up
like a cherub's at his mother when she said to him from the depths of
an easy-chair, "Not so much noise, Charles; you will wake your little
sister."

The inquisitive boy suddenly got off his horse, and treading on tiptoe
as if he were afraid of the sound of his feet on the carpet, came up
with one finger between his little teeth, and standing in one of those
childish attitudes that are so graceful because they are so perfectly
natural, raised the muslin veil that hid the rosy face of a little girl
sleeping on her mother's knee.

"Is Eugenie asleep, then?" said he, quite astonished. "Why is she asleep
when we are awake?" he added, looking up with large, liquid black eyes.

"That only God can know," replied Caroline, with a smile.

The mother and boy gazed at the infant, only that morning baptized.

Caroline, now about four-and-twenty, showed the ripe beauty which
had expanded under the influence of cloudless happiness and constant
enjoyment. In her the Woman was complete.

Delighted to obey her dear Roger's every wish, she had acquired the
accomplishments she had lacked; she played the piano fairly well, and
sang sweetly. Ignorant of the customs of a world that would have treated
her as an