Her eyes, with their sudden leap of light, burned him.

"No; she did go. But I followed them; I brought her back."

"Back to me? She was frightened at what she had done?" she again asked, her eyes still burning, but more dimly, upon him. His eyes dropped before them; looking down at the wasted hands he held, he said:

"No, dearest, not to you to M. Daunay. She is to marry him. She is with his cousin now."

Her vigil had evidently been tearless; even the arrival that morning of the fatal letter had not melted her frozen terror. But now, as she looked speechlessly at him, the long rise of a sob heaved her breast; her hands slid from his; she sank into a chair, and resting her crossed arms upon the table, she bent her head upon them and wept and shuddered. In the sunny stillness of the room the young man stood beside her. He felt an alien before this intimate, maternal anguish.

She did not weep for long. She presently sat upright, dried her eyes, and pushed back her hair, keeping her hand pressed tightly, for a moment, on her forehead, as if in an effort to regain her long habit of self-control; and as if to gain time, to hide the painful effort from him, she pointed to Claire's letter. "Read it," she said.

It was Claire's most callous, most ugly self; its passion of hatred and revenge hardly masked itself in the metallic tone of mockery. They were both well rid of herher dear mama and her dear mama's suitor. They were far too good for her, and she justified them by showing them how far too bad she was for them. Pursuit and reproaches were useless. She feared that her dear mama's ermine robe of respectability must be permanently spotted by a daughter notoriously naughty-for she did not intend to hide her new situation. But perhaps the daughter could be lived down as the daughter's father had been. And on, and onshort phrases, lava-jets from the seething volcano of base vulgarity; Damier felt them burn his own cheek while he read.

Mme. Vicaud's eyes were on his when he raised them; but quickly looking away from him, she said: “It came this morning. Last night I could not understand that telegram; I could not believe that she would not return. I felt that something was being hidden from me; it was like battling in a stifling black air. And then-this came." He had laid the letter beside her, and she

touched it with her finger, as if it had been a snake. "This-this end of all!"

"She is safe," Damier repeated rather helplessly.

"Safe!" the mother echoed. Leaning her head against the chair-back, she closed her eyes. Lovely and dignified even in her disgrace, nothing could smirch and nothing could abase her; she had never looked so noble as at this moment of dreadful defeat and overthrow. "And how have you saved her?" she asked. "What did M. Daunay have to offer-what did you have to offerto bring her back-since it was not repentance? It was not repentance?"

"No; but I believe that she was glad to come. I-I dowered Claire," said Damier, after a momentary pause.

Mme. Vicaud, still keeping her eyes closed, was silent. He leaned over her and took her hand. "All that I have is yours. You dowered her, let us say."

"What do you mean by dowering her?" she asked.

"I have given her two thirds of my income for life."

Her hand in his was chill and passive; he felt in her the cold shudder of shame. "Ah," he said, "from me-from me you do not resent such saving?"

"Resent?-from you?" she said gently. "No, no; it is of her I am thinking. No; you did well, very well to save her-if we may call it saving. You have washed the spots from my respectability. We both know the value of such washing; but it is best-best to have us all respectable," a bitter smile touched her lips,-"since it is that we prize so.

And were there no other inducements?" "There was a condition," he had to nerve himself to the speaking of it,-"that she did not see you again. She has, by her own wish, broken the bond between you. She has left your life."

Mme. Vicaud clenched her hands, and her chin trembled.

"Yet, let me tell you," he said, "I believe that there is more hope for Claire so left in the evil and abasement she has made about herself than if she were to have remained with you; all the forces of her nature were engaged in resistance, or in a pretended submission that bided its time. Now she must do battle with the world on a level where life will teach her lessons she can understand. She has severed herself completely from you-she has completely fulfilled herself. Some new blossoming may follow; who knows?"

"But no blossoming for me. I shall not see it," said Mme. Vicaud. "My life has been useless."

Useless? He wondered over her past, her long efforts, this wreck. Could goodness, however clear-sighted, however divine in its comprehension and pity, prevent evil from working itself out, fulfilling itself? Was not its working out perhaps its salvation?

"How can you tell?" he said. "You have done your work for her."

"I have done nothing for her. Everything has failed." Still, with closed eyes, she leaned her head against the chair, and slow tears fell down her cheeks.

"You have fulfilled yourself toward her; that is not failure. You have fought your fight. Surely it is the fighting, and not its result, that makes success. And can you say that everything has failed-when you still have me to live for? Claire has gone out of your life. She has shut the door on you. She has left you, and-oh, dearest, dearest, she has left you to me!"

He stood before her, looking at her with faithful eyes. His love for her made no menace to her grief; it did not jar upon her sorrow; rather it was with her in it all, it could not be separated from it—as he could not be separated from any part of her life. "You are alone now," he said, "and I am alone."

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"No," she put her hand out to him, "no; we are not alone."

"Then-" The air was golden, and in the

open window white flowers, set there, dazzled against the sky. This day of sunlight and disaster must symbolize the past and the future, as her eyes, with their silent, solemn assent, her face, so sweet and so sorrowful. She rose; he drew her toward him. But then, as though another consecration than embrace and kiss were needed for this strange betrothal, she walked with him, holding his hand, to the window, where the white flowers dazzled in the sun. She looked at the flowers, at the trees, at the splendid serenity of the morning sky, softly breathing the clear, radiant air-as though in "a peace out of pain."

"We will go away," said Damier, who looked at her; and, despite his sorrowing for her, the day seemed to him full of wings and music. "I do not want to see Paris again, do you? And this will be our last memory of it-these flowers, this garden, this sky, that we look at together. We will think of it so, without pain almost, in a new, new life.".

"A new life," she repeated gently and vaguely. Lifting his hand, she kissed it. "You have rescued me from the old one. You are my angel of resurrection," she said.

Yet that the future was dim to her, except through his faith in it, that, indeed, it could never become an unshadowed brightness, he knew, as, leaning against him, needing protection from her bitter thoughts, she mur mured in the anguish of her desolate and bereaved motherhood: "Oh-but my child!"

THE

HE naked statues stared at us along the hall, each one as if to say, "What the divil is two common men doing in this private palace, anyway?" But they did n't faze me, for I knew all about 'em from a newspaper clipping which by chance I had in me pocket; and says I to Clarence O'Shay: "Do ye know the carpet you 're standing on cost thirty-five dollars a yard?"

"The saints!" says Clarence, stepping off of it.

"Do ye know the mosaic floor you 're standing on now cost thirty-five dollars a foot?" says I.

"The divil himself!" says Clarence, stepping back on the carpet.

"And the man that owns it all is worth twenty-eight millions in gold," says I.

Clarence's eyes bulged out like little blue beads on a golliwog.

"Could he come by as much as that honest?" says he.

"No one in this house knows anything about you two," says he, laying hold of the door.

"Did n't the gentleman tell us to come here," says Clarence, "and did n't he give us his pasteboard?"

"Oh, maybe he did," says the lackey, "and then, again, maybe you picked up his card in the street." And with that he opened the door to the night and let in a breath of the fog; and me and Clarence fingered our caps with rage.

Hold on, William!" commands a voice in patent-leather shoes, running down the stairs,

"And a hot dinner, which we ain't had any," says Clarence.

"Yes, sir," says I. "But what the gentleman wanted us to do for you in return he did n't have time to describe, but told us to run

"And you 're just in the nick of time," says the absent-minded Poet, which we saw he was from his overgrowed hair and the fiddling of his hands. "I do hope you understand we want the real thing," says he, "as far as possible."

"We have no idea what you want us to do," says I, inviting his explanations.

"They are made of wood," says the Poet, musing to himself, while me and Clarence looked questions at each other; "but they will sound all right, I think," says the Poet. "And what I want especial to say-oh, there goes the music! Come on!"

And in the gasp of his own breath he galloped up the polished stairs, with me and Clarence chasing his paper dancing-pumps like four cobblestones-past long corridors, and lady's-maids, and boys in buttons, as many as a dream, every one staring at us like the flight of strange birds, and we all the time guessing as to what he wanted us for and what it was that was made of wood. Till the Poet burst through a door, and we after him; and all of a sudden here was me and Clarence in Newport, behind the scenes of a private theatricals, up to our chins in society. "T was such a swarm of the wives, daughters, sons, maid-servants, and manlackeys of millionaires, all running this way and that, and smelling of cut flowers and violet-water, and jingling with jewelry and glittering with clothes, that me and Clarence

was nigh overcome with the altitude of it, and would have liked to crawl off in the dark like two mongrel pups at a dog-show.

The Poet had burrowed himself in the crowd; but here comes William, and says I, smiling kind: "Will you please ask the gentleman what is it that 's made of wood?" And says William: "No, I will not!"

We said to ourselves had he fetched us to play on something of wood, like the castanets or the violin, for which we had none of the gift? And we begun to feel as foolish as two plumbers called in on the run to a case of nose-bleed. And, besides, the Poet would seem to have clean forgot of us, and the stares of the women kept pinning us close to the wall, like two foreign insecks. Till Clarence, that had his appetite all spread for the hot dinner that no one would bring us, and could not keep his morals upright without ballast of food, begun to take hard of the passage of time, and says he:

"Come away from this foolish place, and let's keep on to Andy Coggins' and get a plate of beans."

And, to sweeten your temper, comes William and boosted us off of the stage, and says did we think was the cream of society aching to witness our beauty?

"Oh, yes," says Clarence to me, in a burst. "Get off the stage, and get off the earththat 's the way it is with them swells. This place may be all right," says he, loud enough for every one; "but I'm going down to Andy Coggins' to get a plate of beans."

And the women all opened their mouths to each other like dying fish, till me face tanned with shame. But a friend of the Poet says he:

"I'm glad you 've come; for we could n't have had the play without you. I suppose you 've tried 'em on?"

"Tried on what?" says I. "What is it we 're wanted to do?"

And he put his finger to his mouth and pointed to the curtain; and up it went, with me and Clarence stranded in the wings, and no more intelligent than when we entered the house.

We see a background of good-looking maidens all setting in the woods; and one that I will say was as handsome as ever need be, she was the main consideration of the play. And says she, all speaking in rhymes and fine simile and such high-sounding language as no poor girl could afford, the gist of the following:

"I'm a most misfortunate young person from down here at Tholwick-in-the-Glen. And though I do look as if I was up too early this morning, me character is beyond approach. For the fact is," says she, breaking into tears, "just now when the sun was not yet gilding rosy on the mountaintops, some one waked up me father-waked him up before he was out of his bed, and killed him with the cruel end of a stick. And me, poor romantic bird, I'm out looking for me uncle, that was reputed to be hunting the wild boar this morning-or else," says she, throwing both eyes on the floor, "some handsome young knight that would love me for meself alone. But," says she, blubbering again (and Clarence was deep affected), "no one appears to like me style, and the best thing I'd do is to crawl in some hole and die, like a tired dove!"

But on jumps the Hero, a strapping young foot-ball kicker from Harvard, shining in his armor like a brass tea-pot.

"What a lovely young thing like you!" says he. "Why, when you walk in the garden the lilies turn green, and a bee stopped for some time at your lips, I hear, thinking your words was honey. Show me him that slew your parent, and I'll write his name in the skies of evil fame," says he, "for I'm Sir Hothryn; and to-night, sweet Yvernelle, you and me will be married with the end of the candles that buried the old man."

"Never!" says the Villain, breaking through the door of his castle and landing between 'em. "Young man," says he, "you promised your hand in marriage to me daughter Thuthelred. Leave this stray vir gin alone, and go into the house and make love to Thuthelred, ye forgetful beggar, or else meet trouble. For I 'm a bad man, and

suspected of killing not only Yvernelle's father, but yours, too."

"Then, bedad!" says the Hero, "I consider meself justified in keeping me word of honor to the fair Yvernelle. Look," says he, pointing up at another young woman that stepped on the stage and got lost in the flare of the Heroine's beauty, "observe the approach of the villainous Thuthelred. That woman is swearing to keep you and me apart; but, on me soul," says the Hero, "I swear that you, Yvernelle, are a better-looking girl than this Thuthelred."

"What," says the Villain, "her prettier than my Thuthelred? A slap in the face of me honor!"

And with that the orchestra struck up with chords of disharmony, and the Villain cut a round hole with his sword in the air, and jumped through it to get at the Hero, that had come off with nothing but a dirk; and the only thing that saved the Hero's life was the coming down of the curtain.

"And never a hiss!" says Clarence, waving his hand in disgust at the stage. "They can sit and hear of

a young girl's father treated like that, and they never give vent to a word of objection-a fine creature like that,' says he, "and pretty as ever was made! And that Hero was no good; for why did n't he pick up a cobble and make an end of that man with the sword? I 've always heard ill of the aristocracy," says he, all vacant with hunger, "and now I believe it; and in such a place where doings like that is received with applause I will not remain!"

"No, no hold him!" says the Poet. "What will me play be without the fight? Couldn't ye see that from reading the book?" says he, answering several questions from millionaires in the same breath.

"What book? What fight?" says we. "Oh, 't is most extraordinary if ye have n't understood," says he, with impatience, brushing every one else aside and dragging us into a room. "Here's the two suits of armor," says he, "and why don't you get into 'em? And here's your wooden swords. And there 's half a bowl of punch. And what I want you to do is precisely this. Just a minute," says he; and a lady's-maid hauled him away.

Clarence got that amused by the punch that he let me fit him into his sheet-iron vest, with the arms and legs of a lobster.

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"T is the liquor of the aristocracy," says he, with his head in the bowl; "and I'm wondering how long before I'll arrive at some opinion of it." And he grew that tame I could put the sheet-iron head on him, with the face that opened and shut; and then, when

"And you two stopping here all this time!" says the Poet, red with exasperation. "How in the world do you know if they'll fit?"

"What fit? Fit what?" says I.

"Look here, mister," says Clarence; "I don't know what it is that I don't know whether it fits, and I don't know what it is that is made of wood; but whatever it is, I can neither play on it, eat it, nor spend it for beer; and this place is all crazy, and I'm going down to Andy Coggins' to get a plate of beans."

VOL. LXIII.-107.

he had absorbed the dregs of the punch, he gave the ghost of a smile. But when I stood him up complete and creaking in the rivets, he begun to complain of the ancients for fighting in such foolish clothes, and I knew he was running down again, and had arrived at no opinion of his liquor at all.

"Them spider-legs of yours is the most awkward I ever see," says he, watching me try with the armor, and him all at outs with creation.

"Them ancients was all dwarfs," says I,