sed her; as she alone
kept her face hidden his suspicions were aroused, and then confirmed by
Modeste's dress, which the lover's eye now scanned and noted. He left
the church with the Latournelles and followed them at a distance to
the rue Royale, where he saw them enter a house accompanied by Modeste,
whose custom it was to stay with her friends till the hour of vespers.
After examining the little house, which was ornamented with scutcheons,
he asked the name of the owner, and was told that he was Monsieur
Latournelle, the chief notary in Havre. As Ernest lounged along the rue
Royale hoping for a glimpse into the house, Modeste caught sight of him,
and thereupon declared herself too ill to go to vespers. Poor
Ernest thus had his trouble for his pains. He dared not wander about
Ingouville; moreover, he made it a point of honor to obey orders, and
he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which
Francoise Cochet duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark.

It was the custom of Monsieur and Madame Latournelle to dine at the
Chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after vespers. So, as
soon as the invalid felt a little better, they started for Ingouville,
accompanied by Butscha. Once at home, the happy Modeste forgot her
pretended illness and her disguise, and dressed herself charmingly,
humming as she came down to dinner,--

"Nought is sleeping--Heart! awaking,
Lift thine incense to the skies."

Butscha shuddered slightly when he caught sight of her, so changed did
she seem to him. The wings of love were fastened to her shoulders; she
had the air of a nymph, a Psyche; her cheeks glowed with the divine
color of happiness.

"Who wrote the words to which you have put that pretty music?" asked her
mother.

"Canalis, mamma," she answered, flushing rosy red from her throat to her
forehead.

"Canalis!" cried the dwarf, to whom the inflections of the girl's voice
and her blush told the only thing of which he was still ignorant. "He,
that great poet, does he write songs?"

"They are only simple verses," she said, "which I have ventured to set
to German airs."

"No, no," interrupted Madame Mignon, "the music is your own, my
daughter."

Modeste, feeling that she grew more and more crimson, went off into the
garden, calling Butscha after her.

"You can do me a great service," she said. "Dumay is keeping a secret
from my mother and me as to the fortune which my father is bringin