at Madeleine's heart is mine,
while Bertha's is not. My father, you requested that Bertha and I should
have an understanding with each other; and we have had one. Bertha has
told me that she does not love me. Is it not so, Bertha?"

"I told you that I loved you with all my heart, as the dearest, most
delightful cousin in the world!" answered Bertha, naively.

"Just as I love you!" replied Maurice, smiling upon her tenderly. "But,
as a lover, you definitely rejected me,--did you not?"

"Oh, yes; just as you refused me. We are perfectly agreed upon that
point," she rejoined, with childlike frankness and simplicity.

"For shame, Maurice!" said the countess, in a tone of angry rebuke.

"Grandmother, hear me out. For once my heart must speak, even though it
may be silent forever after. I feel that my whole future destiny hangs
upon the events of this moment. You love me as a de Gramont should love;
you love me with an ambition to see me worthy of my name,--to see that
name rendered more lustrous in my person. How far that is possible, my
father's decision and yours this hour will determine. I am ardent,
impetuous, fond of excitement, reckless at times,--as prone, I fear, to
be tempted to vice as to be inspired by virtue. If you withhold your
consent to my union with the only woman I can love,--if you drive me to
despair,--I am lost! Every pure and lofty aspiration within my nature
will be crushed out, and in its place the opposite inclination will
spring. I warned you before, when you thwarted the noblest resolution I
ever formed. There is yet time to save me from the evil effects of that
disappointment, and to spare me the worst results of _this_. If you
grant me Madeleine"--

"Maurice, for pity's sake!" supplicated Madeleine, extending her clasped
hands toward him.

Maurice caught the outstretched hands in his, and bent over her with an
expression of ineffable love irradiating his countenance.

"Do not speak yet, Madeleine; do not answer until you have heard
me,--until you have well comprehended my meaning. You do not know the
thousand perils by which a young man is beset in Paris,--the siren lures
that are thrown in his way to ensnare his feet, be they disposed to
walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up
before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right
road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that
vortex of follies and vices by which men ar