d been nearly daily in the house, and had only kept out
of the way since the Chevalier had made his appearance. In the look of
bitter reproach which the lad cast at her--and the bitterness of death
itself was in it--she now, for the first time, read not only how
unspeakably he loved her, but how boundlessly she loved him, without
having been aware, whilst dazzled by the Chevalier's brilliance. Now.
for the first time, she understood Duvernet's anxious sighs?--his
silent, unassuming, unobtrusive attentions; now, and now only, she read
her own embarrassed heart--what moved her disquiet breast when Duvernet
came, when she heard his voice.

"'Too late! he is lost to me!' cried the voice in her heart. She had
the resolution to beat down and conquer the hopeless pain which would
have torn her heart; and just because she had this resolution she was
successful.

"The Chevalier was too observant not to see that something had been
occurring to disturb her; but, tenderly enough, he refrained from
trying to unriddle a mystery which she thought herself bound to conceal
from him. He contented himself, by way of clearing anything hostile out
of the path, with hastening on the wedding. The arrangements connected
with it he ordered with such admirable consideration and such delicate
tact, that from his very care in this respect for her state of mind,
she could not but form a higher opinion of his amiability than even
before.

"His conduct to her was marked with such observance of the most
trifling of her wishes, with the sincere courtesy which springs from
the truest and purest affection, that the remembrance of Duvernet
naturally faded more and more from her memory. So that the first
cloud-shadow which fell upon the brightness of their life was the
illness and death of old Vertua.

"Since the night when he had lost all he possessed to the Chevalier, he
had never touched a card. But in the closing moments of his life all
his faculties seemed to be engrossed with the game. Whilst the priest,
who had come to administer the consolations of the Church to him on his
departure from this life, spoke to him of spiritual things, he lay with
closed eyes, murmuring between his teeth, '_Perd!_--_Gagne_,' and
making, with hands quivering in the spasms of death, the motions of
dealing and playing out cards. Angela and the Chevalier, bending over
him, called him by the tenderest names. He did not seem to hear them,
or to know they were there. Wit