ave healed your wounded spirit,
my poor child, and present felicity shall have effaced all recollections
of the past, you will return to dwell among us, never more to part."

"Forget the past in present happiness!" murmured Fleur-de-Marie.

"Even so, my child," replied Rodolph, scarcely able to restrain his
emotion at seeing his daughter's scruples thus shaken.

"Can it be possible," cried Fleur-de-Marie, "that such unspeakable
felicity is reserved for me? The wife of Henry. And one day to pass my
life between him--yourself--and my second mother!" continued she, more
subdued by the ineffable delight such a picture created in her mind.

"All--all that happiness shall be yours, my precious child!" exclaimed
Rodolph, fondly embracing Fleur-de-Marie. "I will reply at once to
Henry's father that I consent to the marriage. Comfort yourself with the
certainty that our separation will be but short; the fresh duties you
will take upon yourself in a wedded life will serve to drive away all
past retrospections and painful reminiscences; and should you yourself
be a mother, you will know and feel how readily a parent sacrifices her
own regrets and griefs to promote the happiness of her child."

"A mother! I a mother!" exclaimed Fleur-de-Marie, with bitter despair,
awakening at that word from the sweet illusion in which her memory
seemed temporarily lulled. "Oh, no! I am unworthy to bear that sacred
name! I should expire of shame in the presence of my own child, if
indeed I could survive the horrible disclosures I must necessarily make
to its father of my past life! Oh, never--never!"

"My child, for pity's sake, listen to me!"

Pale and beautiful amidst her deep distress, Fleur-de-Marie arose with
all the majesty of incurable sorrow, and, looking earnestly at Rodolph,
she said, "We forget that, ere Prince Henry made me his wife, he should
be acquainted with the past!"

"No, no, my daughter," replied Rodolph, "I had by no means forgotten
what he both ought to know and shall learn of the melancholy tale."

"Think you not that I should die, were I thus degraded in his eyes?"

"And he will also admit and feel," added Clemence, "that if I style you
my daughter, he may, without fear or shame, safely call you his wife."

"Nay, dearest mother, I love Prince Henry too truly to bestow on him a
hand that has been polluted by the touch of the ruffians of the Cite."

* * * * *

A short time after this