e day while there I was walking alone in the
environs of the town, when, on the road, a little girl, seemingly about
five years old, in chase of a butterfly, stumbled and fell just before
my feet; I took her up, and as she was crying more from the shock of the
fall than any actual hurt, I was still trying my best to comfort her,
when a lady some paces behind her came up, and in taking the child from
my arms as I was bending over her, thanked me in a voice that made my
heart stand still. I looked up, and beheld Louise.

It was not till I had convulsively clasped her hand and uttered her
name that she recognized me. I was, no doubt, the more altered of the
two,--prosperity and happiness had left little trace of the needy, care
worn, threadbare student. But if she were the last to recognize, she was
the first to recover self-possession. The expression of her face became
hard and set. I cannot pretend to repeat with any verbal accuracy the
brief converse that took place between us, as she placed the child on
the grass bank beside the path, bade her stay there quietly, and walked
on with me some paces as if she did not wish the child to hear what was
said.

The purport of what passed was to this effect: She refused to explain
the certificates of her death further than that, becoming aware of what
she called the "persecution" of the advertisements issued and inquiries
instituted, she had caused those documents to be sent to the address
given in the advertisement, in order to terminate all further
molestation. But how they could have been obtained, or by what art so
ingeniously forged as to deceive the acuteness of a practised lawyer, I
know not to this day. She declared, indeed, that she was now happy, in
easy circumstances, and that if I wished to make some reparation for
the wrong I had done her, it would be to leave her in peace; and in
case--which was not likely--we ever met again, to regard and treat her
as a stranger; that she, on her part, never would molest me, and that
the certified death of Louise Duval left me as free to marry again as
she considered herself to be.

My mind was so confused, so bewildered, while she thus talked, that
I did not attempt to interrupt her. The blow had so crushed me that I
scarcely struggled under it; only, as she turned to leave me, I suddenly
recollected that the child, when taken from my arms, had called her
"Maman," and, judging by the apparent age of the child, it must have
been