he social station of Graham Vane.
Isaura learned from them that Graham, after a tour on the Continent, had
returned to England at the commencement of the year, had been invited
to stand for Parliament, had refused, that his name was in the list
published by the Morning Post of the elite whose arrivals in London,
or whose presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event. That the
Athenaeum had mentioned a rumour that Graham Vane was the author of
a political pamphlet which, published anonymously, had made no
inconsiderable sensation. Isaura sent to England for that pamphlet: the
subject was somewhat dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was
scarcely of the eloquence which wins the admiration of women; and yet
she learned every word of it by heart.

We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which she hailed as an
approach to him was daily making her more remote. The sweet labours
she undertook for that celebrity continued to be sweetened yet more by
secret associations with the absent one. How many of the passages most
admired could never have been written had he been never known!

And she blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the
absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing
torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de
Grantmesnil's command--did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into
green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal
by-world.

But still the one image which reigned over her human heart moved beside
her in the gardens of fairyland.

CHAPTER IV.

Isaura was seated in her pretty salon, with the Venosta, M. Savarin, the
Morleys, and the financier Louvier, when Rameau was announced.

"Ha!" cried Savarin, "we were just discussing a matter which nearly
concerns you, cher poete. I have not seen you since the announcement
that Pierre Firmin is no other than Victor de Mauleon. Ma foi, that
worthy seems likely to be as dangerous with his pen as he was once with
his sword. The article in which he revealed himself makes a sharp lunge
on the Government. 'Take care of yourself. When hawks and nightingales
fly together the hawk may escape, and the nightingale complain of the
barbarity of kings, in a cage: 'flebiliter gemens infelix avis.''"

"He is not fit to conduct a journal," replied Rameau, magniloquently,
"who will not brave a danger for his body in defence of the right to
infinity for his though