use of a boy new to life,
but willfully and recklessly, knowing both the pleasures and their
price--I, who but for your love and my father's, should now be a
solitary exile, paying for my past follies with----"

"Be quiet," interrupted Valerie, with her passionate vivacity. "As
different as was 'Mirabeau juge par sa famille et Mirabeau juge par le
peuple,' are you judged by your enemies, and judged by those who love
you. Granted you have had temptations, follies, errors; so has every
man of high spirit and generous temper, and I value you far more coming
out of a fiery furnace with so much of pure gold that the flames could
not destroy, than if you were some ascetic Pharisee, who has never
succumbed because he has never been tempted, and, born with no
weaknesses, is born with no warmer virtues either!"

Falkenstein laughed, as he looked down at her.

"You little goose! Well, at least you have eloquence, Valerie, if not
truth, on your side; and your sophistry is dear to me, as it springs out
of your love."

"But it is not sophistry," she cried, with an energetic stamp of her
foot. "If you will not listen to philosophy, concede, at least, to fact.
Which is most worthy of my epithets--'noble and good'--Waldemar
Falkenstein, or Maximillian? And yet Maximillian has been quiet and
virtuous from his youth upwards, and always wins white balls from the
ballot of society."

"Well, you shall have the privilege of your sex--the last word," smiled
Waldemar, "more especially as the last word is on my side."

"Hark!" interrupted Valerie, quiet and subdued in a second, "the clock
is striking twelve."

Silently, with her arms round his neck, they listened to the parting
knell of the Old Year, stealing quietly away from its place among men.
From the church towers through England tolled the twelve strokes, with a
melancholy echo, telling a world that its dead past was laid in a sealed
grave, and the stone of Never More was rolled to the door of the
sepulchre. The Old Year was gone, with all its sins and errors, its
golden gleams and midnight storms, its midsummer days of sunshine for
some, its winter nights of starless gloom for others. Its last knell
echoed; and then, from the old grey belfries in villages and towns, over
the stirring cities and the sleeping hamlets, over the quiet meadows and
stretching woodlands and grand old forest trees, rang the Silver Chimes
of the New Year.

"It shall be a happy New Year to you, my darli