had seen Charles cast upon Reine, her agitation when he did not appear, a hundred little signs of her feeling towards him-signs which he had summed up when speaking to his wife of the relations between the two cousins, in the single sentence: "I have impressions." At these thoughts the father's blood kindled, as if the love of the young pair for each other warmed him with its flame.

He resumed his walk in the direction of the Rue d'Assas with a more alert step; and his heart was beating fast as he asked the concierge at Charles's lodging if Monsieur Huguenin was at home. He was in, and the father's emotion increased to such a degree that he was forced to pause before ringing at the door upon which was nailed a modest card inscribed:

"Charles Huguenin, Advocate."

Then he rang; immediately he heard steps approaching, the door was opened and Charles stood before him. On recognizing him the young man turned pale, and leaning against the door stammered out with an emotion which at once betrayed his secret: "You, Monsieur Le Prieux, you-! Oh, how I thank you for coming!"

As he pronounced these words Charles was still carrying on the train of thought which had occupied him ever since his cruel interview with Reine. He had roused himself from his first access of despair, with the energy of a love that knows itself returned. He had risen from the bench on which he had flung himself, saying, "I love her; I am sure she loves me. I cannot lose her like this!"

He had returned precipitately to the Rue d'Assas as if half hoping to find a letter there from Reine-a mad hope which proved how sure he was, in spite of all his denials, of his cousin's heart. No message awaiting him, however, he

had wept over his disappointment in the Then solitude of his student-lodging.

he had brushed his tears away courageously, and set about reflecting what his next step should be. The passions of a southerner of pure race, such as he, are almost invariably accompanied by a lucidity in their ardor which recalls the glowing clearness of their skies as Thus well as their Latin birthright. even in his anguish, Charles desired to think calmly, and forced himself to face the indubitable facts of the situation. The first, the most evident of these, to which he clung as with the instinct of self-preservation, was that Reine loved him. The second, no less evident, was that some obstacle had suddenly risen between them. He could fix its appearance at no more than forty-eight hours back, since no such obstacle had existed when he and his cousin became tacitly betrothed. The fit of mad folly which had driven him, two hours before, to asperse Reine's constancy, was entirely dispelled. He believed her now to have been sincere in engaging herself, and sincere in imploring him so passionately not to enquire into the nature of the mysterious barrier from which she shrank in such terror. This was the third fact; the fourth was that a marriage with some one else was in contemplation. That this projected marriage dated from within the last two days, Charles again did not doubt; otherwise Reine could not have revealed herself to him as she had on the night of the ball. That her parents were closely concerned in this marriage scheme, Charles inferred from Madame Le Prieux' not having told her daughter of his mother's letter. At the moment, carried away as he was, by a fury of jealousy, he had not recognized the importance of this singular fact. He understood now that the silence of Reine's mother implied a deliberate intention of depriving the girl of any liberty of choice between her cousin and this

other suitor. Who was this other? Upon what grounds did his claims rest? Here Charles's imagination was brought to a pause. He realized that Madame Le Prieux had found some means of coercing Reine by terrorizing her; but he could not see into the reasons which sprang from the inner history of this household of "the unclassed," to adopt the term happily invented by one of the most indulgent historians of Parisian life. He had turned this enigma over and over in his mind during these first hours of passionate meditations, and this mystery had only led him to a still deeper one; why had Reine's parents deigned to vouchsafe no explanation to him, Charles, now that they knew of his hopes and feelings through his mother's letter?

He had reached this point in his ineffectual analysis, when the sound of the door-bell made his heart leap in his breast. He had rushed to the door with his wild hope of a message from Reine revived again; and on finding himself face to face with Monsieur Le Prieux, had broken forth into that explosion of gratitude so unintelligible to the new comer. But what was only too intelligible to him after Madamoiselle Perrin's revelations was the distress he perceived in Charles's aspect. This evidence of the young man's love for his daughter agreed so well with his secret wishes, that his tones were full of indulgence and fatherly tenderness as he replied:

"Come, Charles, compose yourself. Take courage. You have nothing to thank me for. I am simply fulfilling my duty as a father. But, good heavens! What a state I find you in, my poor fellow!"

Charles was, in fact, greatly overcome by these words and this kindness for which he was so unprepared, and threw himself into Le Prieux' arms with another confused burst of gratitude. Reine's father was himself deep

ly stirred, but still more deeply intent upon learning the whole truth as to the relations between the two young people. He drew Charles from the anteroom into the inner study, where the young barrister without briefs nourished his youthful reveries.

Le Prieux had been there but once before, but that one visit had sufficed to win the writer's sympathetic interest for the young man. For this modest room with its old-fashioned Provençal furniture of worm-eaten walnut, with the choice photographs on the walls representing the finest architecture and scenery of Nîmes, Arles and AiguesMortes, with its bookcases filled with well-chosen, much-read volumes, with its outlook upon the old trees of the Luxembourg gardens, breathed an atmosphere of studious and romantic youth. It was redolent of the poetry of the native soil, held sacred amidst the whirl of Paris life; and seemed to symbolize the conflict which had gone on in the young man's mind between homesickness for his Provence and the allurements of Paris. The same characteristics which he now saw in the objects about him had already awakened in Hector's mind the idea that Charles might be the very husband he desired for Reine, and this impression added to the affectionate insistence with which he sought to bring out the whole secret of the young man's sentiments.

"No," he began, "I am not good and you must not thank me. I repeat that I am only doing my duty as a father. But you must do your duty also, and respond to this step on my part by absolute sincerity. Come, speak to me freely, openly! Tell me everything—”.

"But what can I tell you," replied Charles, "which my mother's letter has not already told you and Madame Le Prieux? I understood, the moment I saw you enter, that you had come to repeat to me what I already knew from

my cousin, that our marriage is impossible. I ought to have understood it before, from your not sending for me on the receipt of the letter-and yet, Monsieur Le Prieux, I swear to you I would have done everything in my power for Reine's happiness. I would have devoted my life to her-I am a very small personage, I am well aware, but the little I am would have been hers without reserve. My mother, I am sure, has already told you that she and my father feel as I do."

If the revelation of Madame Le Prieux' duplicity, in regard to Madame Huguenin's letter had overwhelmed Reine who had been expecting this proposal, how it must have struck home to her father who was utterly unprepared for the news. In a lightning-flash the whole truth broke upon him! This explained the shade of anxiety in his wife's voice when she asked him: "Have you been sounded on this subject, too?" Moreover, the young man's tone admitted of no doubt, and Reine's father turned his eyes away lest his interlocutor should read the pain in them.

Yet he wished for further light, and accordingly went on plying him with side-questions such as one hazards who dares not fully express his thought: "You tell me that you have been warned by Reine of some sudden obstacle? She was aware, then, of your mother's proposal?"

"Oh, Monsieur Le Prieux," cried Charles, "I beg of you do not blame Reine! My cousin has nothing to reproach herself with-I give you my word of honor! I had never spoken to her of my feelings-never-until the other night, when, indeed, I ventured to ask her what she would answer if my mother addressed you as she has done. I know that this was wrong on my part -I ought to have spoken first to you and Madame Le Prieux. But it was only too natural, after all, that, loving her as I did, I could not endure the

doubt that I should have tried to find out her feeling for me."

"She authorized you, then, to address us?" asked the father.

"I understood that she did not forbid it."

Le Prieux paused a moment in his interrogation, in which each word, while throwing a cruel light upon certain incidents of the past few days, deepened the shadow upon others. His daughter's attitude towards him as she was on her way to speak to her mother, which had been incomprehensible to him before, now became clear; she had evidently believed that her mother had sent for her in order to speak of Madame Huguenin's letter. On the other hand, the words exchanged between mother and daughter became still more enigmatical in view of this understanding between Reine and her cousin. How and why had she changed her mind so suddenly? Had she seen her cousin in the interval or had she written to him? Having just discovered such a total lack of candor on the part of his wife, Hector shuddered at the idea of his daughter's giving a secret rendezvous or carrying on a clandestine correspondence.

The thought was so intolerable to him that he seized the young man by the arm as he exclaimed: "Charles, you are not confessing the whole truth to me. It is ill-done on your part. No, you have not confessed all," he insisted. "Do not interrupt me! You acknowledge that you and Reine were agreed about your mother's writing to us. Reine must therefore have consented to marry you, you admit it. You admit also that she told you the marriage had become impossible? must have spoken or written to you then. You have seen her-when and how? And yet you wish me to believe that neither you nor she have anything to reproach yourselves with?"

She

"I will tell you all," answered the

young man, with a visible effort; "both for her sake and for mine. You, at least shall not suspect her," he went on, with a voice that quivered with remorse for his own injustice: "Yes, I met my cousin this morning at eleven, on the Tuileries Terrace; there was a third person with us. I give you my word of honor that it is the first rendezvous we have ever had. Here is a proof of the truth of what I am telling you," and he drew from his pocket the little blue despatch from Reine, and held it out to Le Prieux. "My cousin wished to speak to me-out of pity, as I now understand. She did not wish me to learn brutally from another the destruction of my dearest hopes. All that we said to each other during that interview I can repeat to you-if only to prevent your being unjust toward her too," and he began to pour forth a recital of the painful interview of the morning-first the impression Reine's note had made upon him, then her arrival, how he had guessed from her pallor that something serious had occurred; then her words, and his to her, his burst of jealous rage and all. The father listened to the recital of these simple but poignant experiences, with his daughter's note in his hand. He looked again at the writing in which he could read her agitation, and a passionate rush of pity came over him for his gentle and sensitive child. He understood now the fever which shone in her eyes when she returned from this cruel interview, and the decision in her voice as she refused the respite her parents offered her; and he understood also the conduct of Fanny Perrin-evidently the third person mentioned by Charles-the innocent witness of this innocent rendezvous. But one point remained darker than ever: What had been Reine's motive for consenting to the marriage with Faucherot, when her choice was left free?

Her father knew, alas! only too well

where to look for the answer to this riddle, but honor obliged him to seek it alone. In this inquiry into what he suspected to be his wife's unscrupulous tactics, he must not seek the aid of this young man, whom he regarded henceforth as their future son-in-law. He had risen as the latter ended his confession, and was now pacing up and down the room in a silence which the other did not venture to break. Although Charles found Reine's attitude still more inexplicable in the light of her father's favoring his suit, yet he understood, with his natural tact, sharpened by love, that he was bound to respect this silence. His heart leaped in his breast as Le Prieux paused suddenly before him, and having looked long into his eyes said, at last, with the solemnity in his voice and gesture of one who has taken a great step, and who sets before another his irrevocable decision:

"You have answered me like an honorable man, Charles, loyally and courageously, and I will speak to you in the same way. You love Reine and you deserve to win her. She loves you and it depends only upon her to become your wife--only upon her, you understand. There has been a question of another marriage these last days, it is true-but I find it hard to imagine that this can be the obstacle to which she alludes. There must be some misunderstanding which I have not yet unravelled. But I will unravel it. I say once more that she shall be your wife on the day when she wishes it. From this hour you have my consent. I believed your word of honor just now and that gives me the right to require you to pledge it again. I ask you to promise me that you will not attempt to see her until I authorize you to do so. There is a great deal of wisdom, as you are now finding out, in our old French custom which requires that children's marriages should be ar

ranged only through the instrumentality of their parents. If you had obeyed this rule you would have come to me in the first place, before speaking to her, and thus have spared her much needless suffering; and you would not have offended her, perhaps irrevocably. Her feelings are very intense, and your -doubt of her must have wounded her deeply. Leave it to me to probe the wound-and once more, since there is a misunderstanding to clear away, leave it to me to clear it! Have I your word that you will do nothing further without my concurrence?"

"You have it," rejoined the young man, seizing both Le Prieux' hands in his.

"And that you will obey me in everything?"

"And that I will obey you in every

thing. You have been my friend always, Monsieur Le Prieux-but how much more now!"

"Now," interrupted the father, who was visibly afraid of giving way to his own feelings, "you will begin to keep your word by sitting down at that table and writing Reine a letter, in which you ask her pardon for the words you spoke to her this morning. That surprises you, eh? But I have my plan -I have my plan. Come now," he added with the tender irony of an older man for the love affairs of his juniors, which he smiles at while secretly enjoying them. "Must I dictate this letter to you? Write and say anything you please. I will deliver it to Reine without reading it. Does that satisfy you?"

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