ng, if my love can make it
so," whispered Waldemar, as the musical bells clashed out in wild
harmony under the winter stars.

She looked up into his eyes. "I _must_ be happy, since it will be passed
with you. Do you remember, Waldemar, the night I saw you first, my
telling you New Year's-day was my birthday, and wondering where you and
I should spend the next? I liked you strangely from the first, but how
little I foresaw that my whole life was to hang on yours!"

"As little as I foresaw when, after heavy losses at Godolphin's, I
watched the Old Year out in my chambers, a tired, ruined, hopeless,
aimless man, with not one on whom I could rely for help or sympathy in
my need, that I should stand here now, free, clear from debt, with all
my old entanglements shaken off, my old scores wiped out, my darker
errors forgotten, my worst enemy humbled, and my own future bright. Oh!
Valerie! Heaven bless you for the love that followed me into exile!"

He drew her closer to him as he spoke, and as he felt the beating of the
heart that was always true to him, and the soft caress of the lips that
had always a smile for him, Falkenstein looked out over the wide
woodland that called him master, glistening in the clear starlight, and
as he listened to the SILVER CHIMES--joyous herald of the New-born
Year--he blessed in his inmost heart the GOLDEN FETTERS OF LOVE.

SLANDER AND SILLERY.

SLANDER AND SILLERY.

I.

THE LION OF THE CHAUSSEE D'ANTIN.

Ma mere est a Paris,
Mon pere est a Versailles.
Et moi je suis ici.
Pour chanter sur la paille,
L'amour! L'amour!
La nuit comme le jour.

Humming this popular if not over-recherche ditty, a man sat sketching in
pastels, one morning, in his rooms at Numero 10, Rue des Mauvais Sujets,
Chaussee d' Antin, Paris.

The band of the national guard, the marchands crying "Coco!" the
charlatans puffing everything from elixirs to lead-pencils, the Empress
and Mme. d'Alve passing in their carriage, the tramp of some Zouaves
just returned from Algeria--nothing in the street below disturbed him;
he went sketching on as if his life depended on the completion of the
picture. He was a man about thirty-three, middle height, and eminently
graceful. He was half Bohemian, half English, and the animation of the
one nation and the hauteur of the other were by turns expressed on his
chiselled features as his thoughts moved with his pencil. The stamp