onfiding manner!

And she had been thus deceiving him for twenty years! But suddenly a
gleam of hope penetrated his confused mind--slight, barely possible;
still a straw to cling to:

"Perhaps Valentine has put her diamonds in Madeleine's room."

Without stopping to consider the indelicacy of what he was about to do,
he hurried into the young girl's room, and pulled open one drawer after
another. What did he find?

Not Mme. Fauvel's diamonds; but Madeleine's seven or eight boxes also
empty.

Great heavens! Was this gentle girl, whom he had treated as a daughter,
an accomplice in this deed of shame? Had she contributed her jewelry to
add to the disgrace of the roof that sheltered her?

This last blow was almost too much for the miserable man. He sank almost
lifeless into a chair, and wringing his hands, groaned over the wreck of
his happiness. Was this the happy future to which he had looked forward?
Was the fabric of his honor, well-being, and domestic bliss, to be
dashed to the earth and forever lost in a day? Were his twenty years'
labor and high-standing to end thus in shame and sorrow?

Apparently nothing was changed in his existence; he was not materially
injured; he could not reach forth his hand, and heal or revenge the
smarting wound; the objects around him were unchanged; everything went
on in the outside world just as it had gone on during the last twenty
years; and yet what a horrible change had taken place in his own heart!
While the world envied his prosperity and happiness, here he sat, more
heartsore and wearied of life than the worst criminal that ever stood
before the inquisition.

What! Valentine, the pure young girl whom he had loved and married in
spite of her poverty, in spite of her cold offering of calm affection in
return for his passionate devotion; Valentine, the tender, loving wife,
who, before a year of married life had rolled by, so often assured
him that her affection had grown into a deep, confiding love, that her
devotion had grown stronger every day, and that her only prayer was that
God would take them both together, since life would be a burden without
her noble husband to shield and cherish her--could she have been acting
a lie for twenty years?

She, the darling wife, the mother of his sons!

His sons? Good God! Were they his sons?

If she could deceive him now when she was silver-haired, had she not
deceived him when she was young?

Not only did he suffer in the prese