at aristocratic
quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
protocol.

The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
d'Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to whom the great house
belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.

The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont's youngest
child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d'Aiglemont, had died of
the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
a widow and children, but the dowager's affection for her sons had
been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
her savings and her own property to her darling Moina.

Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d'Aiglemont's
favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
darling's pretty face, the sound of Moina's voice, her ways, her manner,
her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
a mother's heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
Marquise's life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
heart. Moina, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
As a matter of fact, Mme. d'Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
dreadful accident.

The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in som