anting, but almost defiant. "Mamma," said she, "if
it is Monsieur Riviere, I MUST ask your leave to retire. And you have
neither love nor pity, nor respect for me, if you detain me."

"Mademoiselle!" was the stern reply, "I FORBID you to move. Be good
enough to sit there;" with which the baroness pointed imperiously to
a sofa at the other side of the room. "Josephine, go to your room."
Josephine retired, casting more than one anxious glance over her
shoulder.

Rose looked this way and that in despair and terror; but ended by
sinking, more dead than alive, into the seat indicated; and even as she
drooped, pale and trembling, on that sofa, Edouard Riviere, worn and
agitated, entered the room, and bowed low to them all, without a word.

The baroness looked at him, and then at her daughter, as much as to say,
now I have got you; deceive me now if you can. "Rose, my dear," said
this terrible old woman, affecting honeyed accents, "don't you see
Monsieur Riviere?"

The poor girl at this challenge rose with difficulty, and courtesied
humbly to Edouard.

He bowed to her, and stealing a rapid glance saw her pallor and
distress; and that showed him she was not so hardened as he had thought.

"You have not come to see us lately," said the baroness, quietly, "yet
you have been in the neighborhood."

These words puzzled Edouard. Was the old lady all in the dark, then? As
a public man he had already learned to be on his guard; so he stammered
out, "That he had been much occupied with public duties."

Madame de Beaurepaire despised this threadbare excuse too much to notice
it at all. She went on as if he had said nothing. "Intimate as you were
with us, you must have some reason for deserting us so suddenly."

"I have," said Edouard, gravely.

"What is it?"

"Excuse me," said Edouard, sullenly.

"No, monsieur, I cannot. This neglect, succeeding to a somewhat ardent
pursuit of my daughter, is almost an affront. You shall, of course,
withdraw yourself altogether, if you choose. But not without an
explanation. This much is due to me; and, if you are a gentleman, you
will not withhold it from me."

"If he is a gentleman!" cried Rose; "O mamma, do not you affront a
gentleman, who never, never gave you nor me any ground of offence. Why
affront the friends and benefactors we have lost by our own fault?"

"Oh, then, it is all your fault," said the baroness. "I feared as much."

"All my fault, all," said Rose; then putting her