xamination
badly, this long absence must plead for me."

More than a year passed before they met again--When the morning
arrived, the travelling carriage was ready to start and the ladies
sitting in it, he approached the door of it and offered a bouquet. The
mother accepted it with many thanks. Eugenie nodded gaily to him, and
gave him her gloved hand. He did not see her pale face, and swollen
eyes behind her thick veil. He closed the door and bowed. As the
carriage drove away, Frederic turned once more towards Valentine, and
across his honest face there passed an expression of pity for his less
fortunate rival.

This had been in autumn. When they returned in the middle of winter,
Valentine had left the town; he was occupied at a small court of
justice in the country. Only in the following summer he once again rang
the well known bell at the garden gate. On being told that the house
was full of visitors, cousins, and others who were strangers to him, he
charged the servant with a message that he would return another time;
but a cold bow from her mother whom he met in the streets next day,
showed him that he should not find all as he had hoped; so he never
returned.

Was his absence regretted? Who could solve the enigma on Eugenie's pale
face, when three years later, she married the man her mother had chosen
for her. But now when her thoughts wandered back from the letter before
hereto those days of old, the words of a pensive song resounded in her
heart: "There was a time when happiness was mine to give and take
etc."----

The clattering of swift hoofs was now heard in the street, and she flew
to the window. A horseman on a beautiful grey Arab galloped through the
thick fog which closed behind him. Clouds of steam arose from the
reeking nostrils of the horse.

With an agitated glow in her eyes, she watched the proud and manly
bearing of the rider, and the ease with which he managed his restless
horse. What a difference between this chivalrous firmness, and the soft
pensive manner of his youth. Still she had recognized at their first
meeting, that his heart had lost none of its fresh bloom; it was
developed not changed. Had he this time divested himself of his former
timidity, and spoken the binding words? She shuddered at the thought.

Rapid steps were now heard ascending the stairs. Her habitual
self-command did not forsake her, and when Valentine entered the room,
her face was calm in spite of the quick beatin