d person--vain of her celebrity and proud of her birth. She was
one whose goodness of heart made her always active in promoting the
happiness of others. She was not only generous and charitable, but
willing to serve people by good offices as well as money. Everybody
loved her. The new-born infant, to whose addition to the Christian
community the fete of this night was dedicated, was the pledge of a
union which Madame de Merville had managed to effect between two young
persons, first cousins to each other, and related to herself. There had
been scruples of parents to remove--money matters to adjust--Eugenie had
smoothed all. The husband and wife, still lovers, looked up to her as
the author, under Heaven, of their happiness.

The gala of that night had been, therefore, of a nature more than
usually pleasurable, and the mirth did not sound hollow, but wrung from
the heart. Yet, as Eugenie from time to time contemplated the young
people, whose eyes ever sought each other--so fair, so tender, and so
joyous as they seemed--a melancholy shadow darkened her brow, and she
sighed involuntarily. Once the young wife, Madame d'Anville, approaching
her timidly, said:

"Ah! my sweet cousin, when shall we see you as happy as ourselves? There
is such happiness," she added, innocently, and with a blush, "in being
a mother!--that little life all one's own--it is something to think of
every hour!"

"Perhaps," said Eugenie, smiling, and seeking to turn the conversation
from a subject that touched too nearly upon feelings and thoughts her
pride did not wish to reveal--"perhaps it is you, then, who have made
our cousin, poor Monsieur de Vaudemont, so determined to marry? Pray,
be more cautious with him. How difficult I have found it to prevent his
bringing into our family some one to make us all ridiculous!"

"True," said Madame d'Anville, laughing. "But then, the Vicomte is so
poor, and in debt. He would fall in love, not with the demoiselle, but
the dower. A propos of that, how cleverly you took advantage of his
boastful confession to break off his liaisons with that bureau de
mariage."

"Yes; I congratulate myself on that manoeuvre. Unpleasant as it was to
go to such a place (for, of course, I could not send for Monsieur Love
here), it would have been still more unpleasant to have received such
a Madame de Vaudemont as our cousin would have presented to us. Only
think--he was the rival of an epicier! I heard that there was some
curi