face, "don't say anything more about it; I forgive you, if you
promise never to speak unkindly of him again--never--never--never,
Sarah!"

"But may I just tell him that--that--"

"That what?"

"That you are so young and innocent, and has no pertector like; and that
if you were to love him it would be a shame in him--that it would!"

And then (oh, no, Fanny, there was nothing clouded now in your
reason!)--and then the woman's alarm, the modesty, the instinct, the
terror came upon her:--

"Never! never! I will not love him, I do not love him, indeed, Sarah.
If you speak to him, I will never look you in the face again. It is all
past--all, dear Sarah!"

She kissed the old woman; and Sarah, fancying that her sagacity
and counsel had prevailed, promised all she was asked; so they went
up-stairs together--friends.

CHAPTER VIII.

"As the wind
Sobs, an uncertain sweetness comes from out
The orange-trees.

Rise up, Olympia.--She sleeps soundly. Ho!
Stirring at last." BARRY CORNWALL.

The next day, Fanny was seen by Sarah counting the little hoard that she
had so long and so painfully saved for her benefactor's tomb. The money
was no longer wanted for that object. Fanny had found another; she said
nothing to Sarah or to Simon. But there was a strange complacent smile
upon her lip as she busied herself in her work, that puzzled the old
woman. Late at noon came the postman's unwonted knock at the door. A
letter!--a letter for Miss Fanny. A letter!--the first she had ever
received in her life! And it was from him!--and it began with "Dear
Fanny." Vaudemont had called her "dear Fanny" a hundred times, and the
expression had become a matter of course. But "Dear Fanny" seemed
so very different when it was written. The letter could not well be
shorter, nor, all things considered, colder. But the girl found no fault
with it. It began with "Dear Fanny," and it ended with "yours truly."
"--Yours truly--mine truly--and how kind to write at all!" Now it so
happened that Vaudemont, having never merged the art of the penman
into that rapid scrawl into which people, who are compelled to
write hurriedly and constantly, degenerate, wrote a remarkably good
hand,--bold, clear, symmetrical--almost too good a hand for one who was
not to make money by caligraphy. And after Fanny had got the words by
heart, she stole gently to a cupboard and took forth some specimens of
her own hand, in the