e myself in the knowledge that the old place will
be restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so
strong, guided by a heart so generous."

Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on
the tenderest side of his character--for his heart was generous, and
no one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before
discovered it to be so. Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be
appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you--on
which secretly you value yourself most--but for which nobody, not
admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that
has happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest
representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient
in head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the
professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged
that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose
qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment!

Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen
to me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my
daughter's dot."

Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: "Father, your
first desire must be honour for your son. You have guessed my secret--I
have learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the world, she seemed
like other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I
have said to myself, 'There is the one girl fairer than all others in my
eyes, and the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.'"

"Is that true?--is it?"

"True! does a gentilhomme ever lie? And out of that love for her has
grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something
that may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to
ancestors, nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I,
saved from ruin and penury by Valerie's father, could be base enough
to say to her, 'In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'? Do you
suppose that I, whom you would love and respect as son, could come
to you and say: 'I am oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with
debts--give me your millions and we are quits.' No, Duplessis! You, so
well descended yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you
would have won name and position had you been born the son of a
shoeblack,--you would eternally despise the noble who, in