upon them in a
frenzy of despair.

"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of
your money.--Jenny, stay where you are."

"Good evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes
again. "I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking at
the bewildered waiting maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl.
You have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a
master."

Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were suspiciously
watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends
were arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that
day.

* * * * *

Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above
the world.

Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her
infidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud
vanishes in the sunlight.

Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress's position and fortune,
and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could read
the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying
this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,
like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she was
fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house,
Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she
drank her coffee.

"Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I will
tell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so
much, and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All
on easy terms that madame refused, I do not know why. My word! if I
might drive about in a carriage, have