somewhere. I must be alone a little while, you know; must think it all
over, and see how things stand. Besides, I must step in and see this
fellow who's going to rob me of my daughter, and tell him what I think
of him. Come, off with you!"

"You'll be happy about it--you'll forgive us, won't you, papa?" she
said, turning at the door.

The old gentleman shuffled heavily up to her, and kissed her on the
forehead.

"God bless you, and God's will be done, my darling!" said he; but at
that moment he could say no more.

An hour afterward, however, when the professor knocked the ashes out of
his second pipe, and laid his hand upon the latch of Bressant's door,
the expression upon his strongly-cut features was neither gloomy nor
severe. There was a look in his eyes of benignant sweetness, all the
more impressive because it made one wonder how it could find a place
beneath such stern eyebrows and so deeply lined a forehead. But, cutting
off an offending right hand, although a bitter piece of work enough for
the time being, may, in its after-effect, work as gracious a miracle in
an older and more forbidding gentleman even than Professor Valeyon.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A FLANK MOVEMENT.

Bressant was lying comfortably upon his bed with his eyes closed; no one
would have imagined there had been any outburst or convulsion of passion
in his mental or emotional organism. He breathed easily; there was a
pale tint of red in his cheeks, above his close, brown beard; his
forehead was slightly moist, and his pulse, on which the surgeon laid
his finger with professional instinct, beat quietly and regularly. In
entering upon the world of love, all marks of wounds received upon the
journey seemed to have passed away.

He opened his eyes at the professor's touch, and fixed them upon the old
gentleman in such a serene stare of untroubled complacency as one
sometimes receives from a baby nine months old.

"Well, sir"--the professor, from some subtle delicacy of feeling
respecting the prospective change in their relationship, adopted this
form of address in preference to that more paternal one he had been in
the habit of using since Bressant's accident--"well, sir, how do you
find yourself now?"

"Much better; I shall soon be well now. I feel differently from ever
before--very light and full here," said the young man, indicating the
region of his heart.

"I've seen Sophie," observed Professor Valeyon, after a somewhat long
silenc