s is the beauty that sinks into the hearts and rests there.
I prize my boy more, now that I have seen you. But, oh, Mademoiselle!
pardon me--do not withdraw your hand--pardon the mother who comes from
the sick-bed of her only son and asks if you will assist to save him! A
word from you is life or death to him!"

"Nay, nay, do not speak thus, Madame; your son knows how much I value,
how sincerely I return, his friendship; but--but," she paused a moment,
and continued sadly and with tearful eyes--"I have no heart to give to
him-to any one."

"I do not--I would not if I dared--ask what it would be violence to
yourself to promise. I do not ask you to bid me return to my son and
say, 'Hope and recover,' but let me take some healing message from your
lips. If I understand your words rightly, I at least may say that you do
not give to another the hopes you, deny to him?"

"So far you understand me rightly, Madame. It has been said, that
romance-writers give away so much of their hearts to heroes or heroines
of their own creation, that they leave nothing worth the giving to human
beings like themselves. Perhaps it is so; yet, Madame," added Isaura,
with a smile of exquisite sweetness in its melancholy, "I have heart
enough left to feel for you."

Madame Rameau was touched. "Ah, Mademoiselle, I do not believe in the
saying you have quoted. But I must not abuse your goodness by pressing
further upon you subjects from which you shrink. Only one word more:
you know that my husband and I are but quiet tradesfolks, not in the
society, nor aspiring to it, to which my son's talents have raised
himself; yet dare I ask that you will not close here the acquaintance
that I have obtruded on you?--dare I ask, that I may, now and then, call
on you--that now and then I may see you at my own home? Believe that I
would not here ask anything which your own mother would disapprove if
she overlooked disparities of station. Humble as our home is, slander
never passed its threshold."

"Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our Italian tongue I
call mother, can but feel honoured and grateful whenever it pleases you
to receive visits from us."

"It would be a base return for such gracious compliance with my request
if I concealed from you the reason why I pray Heaven to bless you for
that answer. The physician says that it may be long before my son is
sufficiently convalescent to dispense with a mother's care, and resume
his former life