usiness is it of yours now? Is it the English pride that makes you
wish to learn whether on both sides she is of noble family? How can that
discovery alter your relations towards the affianced bride of another?"

On receipt of this letter, Graham quitted Naples, and shortly afterwards
found himself at Versailles. He obtained permission to establish himself
there, though the English were by no means popular. Thus near to Isaura,
thus sternly separated from her, Graham awaited the close of the siege.
Few among those at Versailles believed that the Parisians would endure
it much longer. Surely they would capitulate before the bombardment,
which the Germans themselves disliked to contemplate as a last resource,
could commence.

In his own mind Graham was convinced that Isaura was the child of
Richard King. It seemed to him probable that Louise Duval, unable
to assign any real name to the daughter of the marriage she
disowned,--neither the name borne by the repudiated husband, nor her
own maiden name,--would, on taking her daughter to her new home, have
induced Cicogna to give the child his name, or that after Cicogna's
death she herself had so designated the girl. A dispassionate confidant,
could Graham have admitted any confidant whatever, might have suggested
the more than equal probability that Isaura was Cicogna's daughter by
his former espousal. But then what could have become of Richard King's
child? To part with the fortune in his hands, to relinquish all the
ambitious dreams which belonged to it, cost Graham Vane no pang: but he
writhed with indignant grief when he thought that the wealth of Richard
King's heiress was to pass to the hands of Gustave Rameau,--that this
was to be the end of his researches--this the result of the sacrifice
his sense of honour imposed on him. And now that there was the
probability that he must convey to Isaura this large inheritance, the
practical difficulty of inventing some reason for such a donation, which
he had, while at a distance made light of, became seriously apparent.
How could he say to Isaura that he had L200,000. in trust for her,
without naming any one so devising it? Still more, how constitute
himself her guardian, so as to secure it to herself, independently
of her husband? Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated with Rameau, or too
romantically unselfish, to permit the fortune so mysteriously conveyed
being exclusively appropriated to herself. And if she were already
married