will mark with a white stone. To dine with M.
Savarin is an event to a man who covets distinction."

"Such compliments reconcile an author to his trade. You deserve the
best return I can make you. You will meet la belle Isaura. I have just
engaged her and her chaperon. She is a girl of true genius; and genius
is like those objects of virtu which belong to a former age, and become
every day more scarce and more precious."

Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his wife hurrying to their
carriage. The American stopped Vane, and whispered, "I am glad, sir, to
hear from my wife that you dine with us to-morrow. Sir, you will meet
Mademoiselle Cicogna, and I am not without a kinkle [notion] that you
will be enthused."

"This seems like a fatality," soliloquized Vane as he walked through the
deserted streets towards his lodging. "I strove to banish that haunting
face from my mind. I had half forgotten it, and now--" Here his murmur
sank into silence. He was deliberating in very conflicted thought
whether or not he should write to refuse the two invitations he had
accepted.

"Pooh!" he said at last, as he reached the door of his lodging, "is
my reason so weak that it should be influenced by a mere superstition?
Surely I know myself too well, and have tried myself too long, to fear
that I should be untrue to the duty and ends of my life, even if I found
my heart in danger of suffering."

Certainly the Fates do seem to mock our resolves to keep our feet from
their ambush, and our hearts from their snare! How our lives may be
coloured by that which seems to us the most trivial accident, the merest
chance! Suppose that Alain de Rochebriant had been invited to that
reunion at M. Louvier's, and Graham Vane had accepted some other
invitation and passed his evening elsewhere, Alain would probably have
been presented to Isaura--what then might have happened? The impression
Isaura had already made upon the young Frenchman was not so deep as
that made upon Graham; but then, Alain's resolution to efface it was but
commenced that day, and by no means yet confirmed. And if he had been
the first clever young man to talk earnestly to that clever young
girl, who can guess what impression he might have made upon her? His
conversation might have had less philosophy and strong sense than
Graham's, but more of poetic sentiment and fascinating romance.

However, the history of events that do not come to pass is not in the
chronicle of the