m he owed so
incalculable a debt.

There was a garden, behind the house, in which there was a small
arbour, where often in the summer evenings Eugene and Lucille had
sat together,--hours never to return! One day she heard from her own
chamber, where she sat mourning, the sound of St. Amand's flute swelling
gently from that beloved and consecrated bower. She wept as she heard
it, and the memories that the music bore softening and endearing his
image, she began to reproach herself that she had yielded so often to
the impulse of her wounded feelings; that chilled by _his_ coldness, she
had left him so often to himself, and had not sufficiently dared to
tell him of that affection which, in her modest self-depreciation,
constituted her only pretension to his love. "Perhaps he is alone now,"
she thought; "the air too is one which he knows that I love;" and with
her heart in her step, she stole from the house and sought the arbour.
She had scarce turned from her chamber when the flute ceased; as she
neared the arbour she heard voices,--Julie's voice in grief, St. Amand's
in consolation. A dread foreboding seized her; her feet clung rooted to
the earth.

"Yes, marry her, forget me," said Julie; "in a few days you will
be another's, and I--I--forgive me, Eugene, forgive me that I have
disturbed your happiness. I am punished sufficiently; my heart will
break, but it will break in loving you." Sobs choked Julie's voice.

"Oh, speak not thus," said St. Amand. "I, _I_ only am to blame,--I,
false to both, to both ungrateful. Oh, from the hour that these eyes
opened upon you I drank in a new life; the sun itself to me was less
wonderful than your beauty. But--but--let me forget that hour. What do I
not owe to Lucille? I shall be wretched,--I shall deserve to be so;
for shall I not think, Julie, that I have embittered your life with our
ill-fated love? But all that I can give--my hand, my home, my plighted
faith--must be hers. Nay, Julie, nay--why that look? Could I act
otherwise? Can I dream otherwise? Whatever the sacrifice, _must_ I not
render it? Ah, what do I owe to Lucille, were it only for the thought
that but for her I might never have seen thee!"

Lucille stayed to hear no more; with the same soft step as that which
had borne her within hearing of these fatal words, she turned back once
more to her desolate chamber.

That evening, as St. Amand was sitting alone in his apartment, he heard
a gentle knock at the door. "Come