--I
have disposed of nothing but my income. Messieurs Cremiere, Massin,
and Minoret my nephew are members of the family council appointed for
Ursula, and I wish them to be present at the rendering of my account."

These words, heard by Massin and quickly passed from one to another
round the ball-room, poured balm into the minds of the three families,
who had lived in perpetual alternations of hope and fear, sometimes
thinking they were certain of wealth, oftener that they were
disinherited.

When, about two in the morning, the guests were all gone and no one
remained in the salon but Savinien, Bongrand, and the abbe, the old
doctor said, pointing to Ursula, who was charming in her ball dress; "To
you, my friends, I confide her! A few days more, and I shall be here no
longer to protect her. Put yourselves between her and the world until
she is married,--I fear for her."

The words made a painful impression. The guardian's account, rendered a
day or two later in presence of the family council, showed that Doctor
Minoret owed a balance to his ward of ten thousand six hundred francs
from the bequest of Monsieur de Jordy, and also from a little capital
of gifts made by the doctor himself to Ursula during the last fifteen
years, on birthdays and other anniversaries.

This formal rendering of the account was insisted on by the justice of
the peace, who feared (unhappily, with too much reason) the results of
Doctor Minoret's death.

The following day the old man was seized with a weakness which compelled
him to keep his bed. In spite of the reserve which always surrounded the
doctor's house and kept it from observation, the news of his approaching
death spread through the town, and the heirs began to run hither and
thither through the streets, like the pearls of a chaplet when the
string is broken. Massin called at the house to learn the truth, and was
told by Ursula herself that the doctor was in bed. The Nemours doctor
had remarked that whenever old Minoret took to his bed he would die;
and therefore in spite of the cold, the heirs took their stand in the
street, on the square, at their own doorsteps, talking of the event so
long looked for, and watching for the moment when the priests should
appear, bearing the sacrament, with all the paraphernalia customary in
the provinces, to the dying man. Accordingly, two days later, when the
Abbe Chaperon, with an assistant and the choir-boys, preceded by the
sacristan bearing th