a blade of grass--all dry,
hard-beaten gravel, after the ugly French fashion, convenient enough, it
must be confessed, for the evening loungers, gay or tired, whom the dewy
green of Nature might incommode.

Leonie's father lived in Paris, and he had brought her when only three
years old to the gray stone house and the care of his only sister,
Madame Perrin, a childless widow, who gladly received the beautiful
little girl to the large shelter of a loving heart. But Leonie never
forgot her father. The little creature would sit on her low-cushioned
chair and sing to herself, "Mon beau papa! mon beau papa! O comme je
t'aime, mon beau papa!" I suppose every tender father appears beautiful
to his little child, but Colonel Regnault was indeed a strikingly
handsome man, with a perfect grace and dignity of manner which rendered
him indispensable to the court of Louis Napoleon, where he had a
prominent position on all days of ceremony. Once or twice a year he made
his escape from court duties for a brief visit to Leonie, whose love for
him grew more intense with years, concentrating in itself all the
romance of her enthusiastic nature.

Madame Perrin saw few visitors, and scarcely ever went out except to
mass. Every morning her good Louise took Leonie to the girls' school in
the old stone mansion which had once been the home of Lamartine, and
went every evening to conduct her home again. Of course, Leonie had her
inseparable friend, as what school-girl has not, and few lovers are so
devoted to each other as were Leonie Regnault and Helene Dupres. They
sat side by side every day in school, and out of school wrote each other
long letters, of which they were generally themselves the bearers. Life
seems so rich and inexhaustible when it is new--the merest nothing has
its poem and history. They had made their first communion together,
which was the most important incident hitherto in Leonie's uneventful
life. Her father had come down on this occasion, and when she came from
the altar he had put aside her white veil and kissed her with tears in
his eyes.

Leonie had completed her fifteenth year when she was thrown into great
excitement by an unexpected piece of news. Her father was about to
marry. The future Madame Regnault was a young widow of good family and
large fortune. He had taken this step, he said, for Leonie's sake even
more than for his own. He wished to have his daughter with him and to
cultivate her talents; and how co