d good-morrow."

"Adieu, Lieutenant; adieu, Pierre," said the abbe, as he waved his hand
and passed out.

I stood for a minute or two uncertain of purpose; why, I know not. The
tone of the last few words seemed uttered in something like a sneer.
"What folly, though!" said I to myself. "D'Ervan is a strange fellow,
and it is his way."

"We shall meet soon, Abbe," I cried out, as he was turning the corner
of the park wall.

"Yes, yes, rely on it; we shall meet,--and soon."

He kept his word.

CHAPTER XXIX. LA ROSE OF PROVENCE.

The one thought that dwelt in my mind the entire day was that Marie de
Rochfort was Charles de Meudon's sister. The fact once known, seemed to
explain that secret power she exercised over my hopes and longings. The
spell her presence threw around ever as she passed me in the park; that
strange influence with which the few words I had heard her speak still
remained fast rooted in my memory,--all these did I attribute to the
hold her name had taken of my heart as I sat night after night listening
to her brother's stories. And then, why had I not guessed it earlier?
why had I not perceived the striking resemblance which it now seemed
impossible to overlook? The dark eye, beaming beneath a brow squarely
chiselled like an antique cameo; the straight nose, and short, up-turned
lip, where a half-saucy look seemed struggling with a sweet smile; and
then the voice,--was it not his own rich. Southern accent, tempered by
her softer nature? Yes; I should have known her.

In reflections like these I made my round of duty, my whole heart
wrapped up in this discovery. I never thought of De Beauvais, or his
letter. It seemed to me as though I had known her long and intimately.
She was not the Rose de Provence of the Court, the admired of the
Tuileries, the worshipped belle of Versailles; but Marie de Meudon, the
sister of one who loved me as a brother.

There was a dark alley near the Trianon that led along the side of a
little lake, where rocks and creeping plants, rudely grouped together,
gave a half-wild aspect to the scene; the tall beech and the drooping
ash-trees that grew along the bank threw their shadows far across the
still water. And here I had remarked that Mademoiselle de Meudon came
frequently alone. It was a place, from its look of shade and gloom,
little likely to attract the gay visitors of the Court, who better loved
the smoothly-shaven grass of the Palace walks, or the broad terra