in you. But now, tomorrow, you shall hear all about it, and my story will at the same time explain my sadness."

Notwithstanding the fatigue of her journey, Mme. de Gernancé scarcely slept that night, so great was her anxiety to hear the explanation of what was a mystery to her.

She was up early in the morning, and hastened to find Elinor, and together the two wandered out into the park to have their talk alone. Mme. de Roselis walked in silence by her friend's side, a little shy of making this confidence that she had promised.

At last, hesitating slightly, she thus began:

"It is too late now, dear friend, to attempt to hide from you a secret that I have always wanted to tell you, and which I only delayed because I knew you would not approve. However, since I must confess, the baby who has so excited your curiosity is my daughter. I had so longed for a child, but I could not bear to place my neck a second time under the yoke that had weighed so heavy on me before."

Mme. de Gernancé could not refrain from showing the surprise she felt; but without giving her time to speak, Elinor went on to tell her about the rash scheme she had formed on the voyage, and the means she had adopted for carrying it out.

She came at last to the birth of the child, but here she was interrupted impetuously by her friend.

"What precautions and prudence to bestow on an act of sheer madness! How much you risked! How could you compromise in such a way your reputation, and indeed your very life! And why all these sacrifices? Just to grasp an imperfect happiness you are obliged to hide, and dare not show! So this is to what your excessive caution has brought you! Carried away by your imagination, you have hugged a chimera which led you to refuse the real blessings of life in favor of the hollow satisfaction of following a caprice! Oh, take my advice, lose no time in recalling the father of that dear child. Do not any longer deprive yourself of the pleasures of natural affection and the sweetest of home ties."

"Ah, it is no longer in my power," exclaimed Mme. de Roselis. "Listen a moment, and you shall see how I have been punished for the error you so severely condemn."

Then she reminded her of the young aide-de-camp who had been so much talked about at Mme. de B.'s, and who had been so keenly regretted by everybody.

"What!" cried Mme. de Gernancé, "was it he? Oh, what have you done, Elinor? How I pity you! Now you see how your folly has destroyed your peace of mind and happiness, and by a punishment that you richly deserve, it is not even possible for you to make any amends. Henceforth you will be a wife without a right to bear the name, and a mother, though you scarcely dare to have it known. You will spend your life blushing for the most natural and honorable of feelings, and you, so beautiful, so brilliant, so richly gifted by nature and fortune, have by your own perverse act deprived yourself of the happiness the meanest of women is entitled to enjoy, the happiness of having husband and child, the sweetest of all! But there is more in it even than that. I can read your heart; it is useless for your pride to try to conceal the fact from your friend and from yourself. Your heart is no longer in your own keeping; you love, you have given it—"

At this, Mme. de Roselis hid her face in her hands; the tears flowed from her eyes.