letter, Monsieur Dumay," said Modeste, erecting
herself like a lioness defending her cubs.

"There it is, mademoiselle," he replied.

Modeste put it into the bosom of her dress, and gave Dumay the one
intended for her father.

"I know what you are capable of, Dumay," she said; "and if you take
one step against Monsieur de Canalis, I shall take another out of this
house, to which I will never return."

"You will kill your mother, mademoiselle," replied Dumay, who left the
room and called his wife.

The poor mother was indeed half-fainting,--struck to the heart by
Modeste's words.

"Good-bye, wife," said the Breton, kissing the American. "Take care of
the mother; I go to save the daughter."

He made his preparations for the journey in a few minutes, and started
for Havre. An hour later he was travelling post to Paris, with the haste
that nothing but passion or speculation can get out of wheels.

Recovering herself under Modeste's tender care, Madame Mignon went up to
her bedroom leaning on the arm of her daughter, to whom she said, as her
sole reproach, when they were alone:--

"My unfortunate child, see what you have done! Why did you conceal
anything from me? Am I so harsh?"

"Oh! I was just going to tell it to you comfortably," sobbed Modeste.

She thereupon related everything to her mother, read her the letters
and their answers, and shed the rose of her poem petal by petal into the
heart of the kind German woman. When this confidence, which took half
the day, was over, when she saw something that was almost a smile on the
lips of the too indulgent mother, Modeste fell upon her breast in tears.

"Oh, mother!" she said amid her sobs, "you, whose heart, all gold and
poetry, is a chosen vessel, chosen of God to hold a sacred love, a
single and celestial love that endures for life; you, whom I wish to
imitate by loving no one but my husband,--you will surely understand
what bitter tears I am now shedding. This butterfly, this Psyche of my
thoughts, this dual soul which I have nurtured with maternal care, my
love, my sacred love, this living mystery of mysteries--it is about to
fall into vulgar hands, and they will tear its diaphanous wings and rend
its veil under the miserable pretext of enlightening me, of discovering
whether genius is as prudent as a banker, whether my Melchior has saved
his money, or whether he has some entanglement to shake off; they
want to find out if he is guilty to bourgeois eyes of