the shadow of impropriety in letting me know more--forget that
I have said a word."

Adrienne became serious and pensive, and, after a silence of some
moments, she thus answered Dr. Baleinier: "On this subject, there are
some things that I do not know--others that I may tell you--others again
that I must keep from you: but you are so kind to-day, that I am happy
to be able to give you a new mark of confidence."

"Then I wish to know nothing," said the doctor, with an air of humble
deprecation, "for I should have the appearance of accepting a kind of
reward; whilst I am paid a thousand times over, by the pleasure I feel
in serving you."

"Listen," said Adrienne, without attending to the delicate scruples of
Dr. Baleinier; "I have powerful reasons for believing that an immense
inheritance must, at no very distant period, be divided between
the members of my family, all of whom I do not know--for, after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, those from whom we are descended
were dispersed in foreign countries, and experienced a great variety of
fortunes."

"Really!" cried the doctor, becoming extremely interested. "Where is
this inheritance, in whose hands?"

"I do not know."

"Now how will you assert your rights?"

"That I shall learn soon."

"Who will inform you of it?"

"That I may not tell you."

"But how did you find out the existence of this inheritance?"

"That also I may not tell you," returned Adrienne, in a soft and
melancholy tone, which remarkably contrasted with the habitual vivacity
of her conversation. "It is a secret--a strange secret--and in those
moments of excitement, in which you have sometimes surprised me, I have
been thinking of extraordinary circumstances connected with this secret,
which awakened within me lofty and magnificent ideas."

Adrienne paused and was silent, absorbed in her own reflections.
Baleinier did not seek to disturb her. In the first place, Mdlle.
de Cardoville did not perceive the direction the coach was taking;
secondly, the doctor was not sorry to ponder over what he had just
heard. With his usual perspicuity, he saw that the Abbe d'Aigrigny
was concerned in this inheritance, and he resolved instantly to make a
secret report on the subject; either M. d'Aigrigny was acting under the
instructions of the Order, or by his own impulse; in the one event, the
report of the doctor would confirm a fact; in the other, it would reveal
one.

For some time, therefore, the