er
feelings too to vent on him in her own arch, shy, fitful way. Letters
can enchain hearts; it was by letters that these two found themselves
imperceptibly betrothed. Their union was looked forward to as certain,
and not very distant. Rose was fairly in love.

One day, Dr. Aubertin, coming back from Paris to Beaurepaire rather
suddenly, found nobody at home but the baroness. Josephine and Rose were
gone to Frejus; had been there more than a week. She was ailing again;
so as Frejus had agreed with her once, Rose thought it might again. "She
would send for them back directly."

"No," said the doctor, "why do that? I will go over there and see them."
Accordingly, a day or two after this, he hired a carriage, and went off
early in the morning to Frejus. In so small a place he expected to find
the young ladies at once; but, to his surprise, no one knew them nor had
heard of them. He was at a nonplus, and just about to return home and
laugh at himself and the baroness for this wild-goose chase, when he
fell in with a face he knew, one Mivart, a surgeon, a young man of some
talent, who had made his acquaintance in Paris. Mivart accosted him with
great respect; and, after the first compliments, informed him that he
had been settled some months in this little town, and was doing a fair
stroke of business.

"Killing some, and letting nature cure others, eh?" said the doctor;
then, having had his joke, he told Mivart what had brought him to
Frejus.

"Are they pretty women, your friends? I think I know all the pretty
women about," said Mivart with levity. "They are not pretty,"
replied Aubertin. Mivart's interest in them faded visibly out of his
countenance. "But they are beautiful. The elder might pass for Venus,
and the younger for Hebe."

"I know them then!" cried he; "they are patients of mine."

The doctor colored. "Ah, indeed!"

"In the absence of your greater skill," said Mivart, politely; "it is
Madame Aubertin and her sister you are looking for, is it not?"

Aubertin groaned. "I am rather too old to be looking for a Madame
Aubertin," said he; "no; it is Madame Raynal, and Mademoiselle de
Beaurepaire."

Mivart became confidential. "Madame Aubertin and her sister," said he,
"are so lovely they make me ill to look at them: the deepest blue eyes
you ever saw, both of them; high foreheads; teeth like ivory mixed with
pearl; such aristocratic feet and hands; and their arms--oh!" and by way
of general summary the you