t well or not 'tis not for me
to say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were
rose-coloured.

CHAPTER VII.

All the earlier part of that next day, Graham Vane remained in-doors--a
lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day
all hearts at Paris were in unison. Discontent was charmed into
enthusiasm--Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism
and Socialism and other "isms" not to be realised except in some
undiscovered Atlantis!

The Emperor was the idol of the day--the names of Jules Favre and
Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out of work,
beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that
might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,--even Armand Monnier
was found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the
column in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow malcontent,
with eyes uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, "Do you not
feel at this moment that no Frenchman can be long angry with the Little
Corporal? He denied La Liberte, but he gave La Gloire."

Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was compelling into
one resolve the doubts and scruples which had so long warred against the
heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue.

The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light
in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura.

He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had
sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to
strive.

But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to
his heart. What though he had never formally declared to her his
affection--never, in open words, wooed her as his own--never even
hinted to her the hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly
entertained,--still was it true that his love had been too transparent
not to be detected by her, and not to have led her on to return it?

Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to
her: at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps
interested her fancy.

We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic
temperament, especially when developed in women, is too elastic to
suffer the things of real life to have lasting influence over happiness
or sorrow,--that in the pursuits in which her thought and imagination
found emp