lm pressed his. How the
delicious sense baffled and mystified the cold judgment.

Josephine raised her eyes thankfully to heaven.

While the young lovers yet thrilled at each other's touch, yet could not
look one another in the face, a clatter of horses' feet was heard.

"That is Colonel Raynal," said Josephine, with unnatural calmness. "I
expected him to-day."

The baroness was at the side window in a moment.

"It is he!--it is he!"

She hurried down to embrace her son.

Josephine went without a word to her own room. Rose followed her the
next minute. But in that one minute she worked magic.

She glided up to Edouard, and looked him full in the face: not the sad,
depressed, guilty-looking humble Rose of a moment before, but the old
high-spirited, and some what imperious girl.

"You have shown yourself noble this day. I am going to trust you as only
the noble are trusted. Stay in the house till I can speak to you."

She was gone, and something leaped within Edouard's bosom, and a flood
of light seemed to burst in on him. Yet he saw no object clearly: but he
saw light.

Rose ran into Josephine's room, and once more surprised her on her
knees, and in the very act of hiding something in her bosom.

"What are you doing, Josephine, on your knees?" said she, sternly.

"I have a great trial to go through," was the hesitating answer.

Rose said nothing. She turned paler. She is deceiving me, thought she,
and she sat down full of bitterness and terror, and, affecting not to
watch Josephine, watched her.

"Go and tell them I am coming, Rose."

"No, Josephine, I will not leave you till this terrible meeting is over.
We will encounter him hand in hand, as we used to go when our hearts
were one, and we deceived others, but never each other."

At this tender reproach Josephine fell upon her neck and wept.

"I will not deceive you," she said. "I am worse than the poor doctor
thinks me. My life is but a little candle that a breath may put out any
day."

Rose said nothing, but trembled and watched her keenly.

"My little Henri," said Josephine imploringly, "what would you do with
him--if anything should happen to me?"

"What would I do with him? He is mine. I should be his mother. Oh! what
words are these: my heart! my heart!"

"No, dearest; some day you will be married, and owe all the mother to
your children; and Henri is not ours only: he belongs to some one I have
seemed unkind to. Perhaps he thinks me hea