g low, and still holding my hand, "did you
see a picture in the boudoir of the old house?"

"I did; a picture painted on a panel."

"The portrait of a nun?"

"Yes."

"You heard her history?"

"Yes."

"You remember what we saw that night in the berceau?"

"I shall never forget it."

"You did not connect the two ideas; that would be folly?"

"I thought of the apparition when I saw the portrait," said I; which
was true enough.

"You did not, nor will you fancy," pursued he, "that a saint in heaven
perturbs herself with rivalries of earth? Protestants are rarely
superstitious; these morbid fancies will not beset _you?_"

"I know not what to think of this matter; but I believe a perfectly
natural solution of this seeming mystery will one day be arrived at."

"Doubtless, doubtless. Besides, no good-living woman--much less a pure,
happy spirit-would trouble amity like ours n'est-il pas vrai?"

Ere I could answer, Fifine Beck burst in, rosy and abrupt, calling out
that I was wanted. Her mother was going into town to call on some
English family, who had applied for a prospectus: my services were
needed as interpreter. The interruption was not unseasonable:
sufficient for the day is always the evil; for this hour, its good
sufficed. Yet I should have liked to ask M. Paul whether the "morbid
fancies," against which he warned me, wrought in his own brain.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE APPLE OF DISCORD.

Besides Fifine Beck's mother, another power had a word to say to M.
Paul and me, before that covenant of friendship could be ratified. We
were under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously
her son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and to
which M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month--the sliding panel of the
confessional.

"Why were you so glad to be friends with M. Paul?" asks the reader.
"Had he not long been a friend to you? Had he not given proof on proof
of a certain partiality in his feelings?"

Yes, he had; but still I liked to hear him say so earnestly--that he
was my close, true friend; I liked his modest doubts, his tender
deference--that trust which longed to rest, and was grateful when
taught how. He had called me "sister." It was well. Yes; he might call
me what he pleased, so long as he confided in me. I was willing to be
his sister, on condition that he did not invite me to fill that
relation to some future wife of his; and tacitly vowed as he was to
celibac