onsent to
my, union, on which depends your own happiness, my dear uncle, and
that of your nephew,

"FABIEN."

"Rather too formal," said Jeanne. "Now, let me try."

And the enchantress added, with ready pen:

"It is I, Monsieur Mouillard, who am chiefly in need of forgiveness. Mine
is the greater fault by far. You forbade Monsieur Fabien to love me, and
I took no steps to prevent his doing so. Even yesterday, when he came to
your house, it was my doing. I had assured him that your kind heart would
not be proof against his loving confession.

"Was I really wrong in that?

"The words that you spoke just now have led me to hope that I was not.

"But if I was wrong, visit your anger on me alone. Forgive your nephew,
invite him to dinner instead of us, and let me depart, regretting only
that I was not judged worthy of calling you uncle, which would have been
so pleasant and easy a name to speak.

"JEANNE."

I read the two letters over aloud. Madeleine broke into sobs as she
listened.

A smile flickered about the corners of Jeanne's mouth.

We left the house, committing to Madeleine the task of choosing a
favorable moment to hand M. Mouillard our joint entreaty.

And here I may as well confess that from the instant we got out of the
house, all through breakfast at the hotel, and for a quarter of an hour
after it, M. Charnot treated me, in his best style, to the very hottest
"talking-to" that I had experienced since my earliest youth. He ended
with these words: "If you have not made your peace with your uncle by
nine o'clock this evening, Monsieur, I withdraw my consent, and we shall
return to Paris."

I strove in vain to shake his decision. Jeanne made a little face at me,
which warned me I was on the wrong track.

"Very well," I said to her, "I leave the matter in your hands."

"And I leave it in the hands of God," she answered. "Be a man. If trouble
awaits us, hope will at any rate steal us a happy hour or two."

We were just then in front of the gardens of the Archbishop's palace, so
M. Charnot walked in. The current of his reflections was soon changed by
the freshness of the air, the groups of children playing around their
mothers--whom he studied ethnologically and with reference to the racial
divisions of ancient Gaul--by the beauty of the landscape--its foreground
of flowers, the Place St. Michel beyond, and further yet, above the
barrack-roofs, the li