rejection of his hand; her sudden disappearance, and the
mad pursuit, which terminated by casting him insensible at Ronald's
door, and brought to his succor one who not only watched beside him with
all the devotion of a brother, mingled with the tenderness of womanhood
itself, but whose buoyant, healthy tone of mind had infused new hope and
vigor into a broken, despondent, prostrate spirit.

Ronald Walton was placed in an advantageous position in Paris by the
very fact of being an American. His intellect, talents, manners, person,
fitted him to grace the most refined society; and, coming from a land
where distinctions of rank are not arbitrarily governed by the accident
of birth, but where men are assigned their positions in the social scale
through a juster, higher, more liberal verdict, the young Carolinian
gained facile admission into the most exclusive circles abroad, and even
took precedence of individuals who made as loud a boast of noble blood
and hereditary titles as though the concentrated virtues of all their
ancestors had been transmitted to them through these dubious mediums.

Ronald, as the intimate friend of Maurice de Gramont, had received an
invitation to the dinner given by the Marchioness de Fleury to the
relatives of the viscount.

The young men entered Madame de Fleury's drawing-room together, and,
after having basked for a few seconds in smiles of meridian radiance,
and been inundated by a flood of softly syllabled words, moved away to
let the beams of their sunny hostess fall upon new-comers.

Maurice glanced around the room in search of his cousin.

"She has just entered the antechamber," said Ronald, comprehending his
look. "Her Hebe-like face this minute flashed upon me."

While he was speaking, Bertha and her uncle were announced, and advanced
toward their hostess.

The low genuflection of the marchioness had been responded to by
Bertha's unstudied courtesy, and the lips of the young girl had just
parted to speak, when she suddenly gave a violent start, and uttered a
cry as sharp and involuntary as though she had trodden upon some
piercing instrument. As she tottered back, her dilated eyes were fixed
upon Madame de Fleury in blank amazement.

"What is it, my dear? Are you ill?" asked her uncle with deep concern.

Bertha did not reply, but still gazed at the marchioness, or rather her
eyes ran over the lady's toilet, and she clung to her uncle's arm as
though unable to support herself.