rs passed on, and upon each birthday, wherever Bertha chanced
to be, in Bordeaux, in Paris, in Brittany, a small parcel was
mysteriously left with the _concierge_ of the house where she was
residing. The package was always addressed in Madeleine's handwriting,
and contained some exquisite piece of needle-work, but no letter, and it
bore no mark of post or express. It was invariably delivered by private
hand. At least, it rendered certain the consolatory facts, not only that
Bertha was unforgotten, but that Madeleine was cognizant of all her
movements.

No sooner had the heiress reached her majority than she prepared to
carry into execution a plan which for a long period had been silently
forming itself in her mind. Her earnest desire to visit America had been
secretly, but systematically, strengthened by Count Tristan. He well
knew that the Marquis de Merrivale would never be induced to become her
escort; and, what was more likely than that she should seek the
countenance and protection of her other relatives?

He played his cards so adroitly that Bertha, without once suspecting his
machinations, wrote to him, on the very day that closed her twenty-first
year, and invited the countess and himself to accompany her upon an
American tour. She took care delicately to make a stipulation that the
expenses of the projected trip should devolve upon her. The count
concealed his exultation under an air of well-acted reluctance, and
required much persuasion before he could be taught to look with favor
upon this _unexpected_ and _sudden_ proposition.

There was no simulation in the dismay, the horror with which Bertha's
proposal was greeted by the countess. How was she to breathe in a land
where hereditary claims to rank were unknown?--where distinctions of
_brains_ not _blood_ were alone recognized?--where a man might rise to
the highest position, as ruler of the realm, though his father chanced
to be a mechanic, and his grandfather's existence was untraceable? For a
time, Bertha's entreaties and the count's representations were equally
impotent; the countess was inexorable. But her son was not to be
baffled; he found an avenue through which her heart could be reached,
and her resolution undermined. It lay in the suggestion that Bertha's
strong inclination to visit America sprang from a desire again to behold
Maurice, and that the result of their meeting, after so long a
separation, might be in the highest degree felicitous. Ber