t she were happy and contented!"

"Your letters must have miscarried,--you are not sure even of her
address. Rely upon it, she is happy. Do you think that she would a
second time have 'stooped beneath her'"--Mainwaring's lip writhed as he
repeated that phrase--"if her feelings had not been involved? I would
not wrong your sister,--I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and
remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the
nature of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting."

"Ah, William, how can you know her heart?"

"By comparing it with yours. Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith!
Susan, we were formed for each other! Our natures are alike, save that
yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its
simple candour. You will be my guide to good. Without you I should have
no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this
hand trembles still!"

"William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition! At
night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,--pale with
suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,--need of
our services, our affections,--if we could but repair the grief we have
caused her!"

Susan's head sank on her lover's shoulder. She had said "need of us,"
"need of our services." In those simple monosyllables the union was
pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.

From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,--we are
at Paris. In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant
courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and
downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the
First Consul.

"Par Dieu!" said B----, "power, like misery, makes us acquainted with
strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what the First Consul can have
to say to Olivier Dalibard."

Fouche, who at that period was scheming for the return to his old
dignities of minister of police, smiled slightly, and answered: "In
a time when the air is filled with daggers, one who was familiar with
Robespierre has his uses. Olivier Dalibard is a remarkable man. He is
one of those children of the Revolution whom that great mother is bound
to save."

"By betraying his brethren?" said B----, dryly.

"I do not allow the inference. The simple fact is that Dalibard has
spent many years in England; he has married an Englishwoman of birth and
connecti