e the delicate lines and intricate curves of
engraving and the watermark. She was naturally suspicious, for as much
forged paper was in circulation as true, which was a great hindrance to
commerce. As in former days, in the case of such as copied the King's
signature, forgers of the national currency were punished by death; yet
plates for printing _assignats_ were to be found in every cellar, the
Swiss smuggled in counterfeits by the million, whole packets were put in
circulation in the inns, the English landed bales of them every day on
our coasts, to ruin the Republic's credit and bring good patriots to
destitution. Elodie was in terror of accepting bad paper, and still more
in terror of passing it and being treated as an accomplice of Pitt,
though she had a firm belief in her own good luck and felt pretty sure
of coming off best in any emergency.

Evariste looked at her with the sombre gaze that speaks more movingly of
love than the most smiling face. She returned his gaze with a mocking
curl of the lips and an arch gleam in the dark eyes,--an expression she
wore because she knew he loved her and liked to know it and because such
a look provokes a lover, makes him complain of ill-usage, brings him to
the speaking point, if he has not spoken already, which was Evariste's
case.

Before depositing the _assignats_ in the strong-box, she produced from
her work-basket a white scarf, which she had begun to embroider, and set
to work on it. At once industrious and a coquette, she knew
instinctively how to ply her needle so as to fascinate an admirer and
make a pretty thing for her wearing at one and the same time; she had
quite different ways of working according to the person watching her,--a
nonchalant way for those she would lull into a gentle languor, a
capricious way for those she was fain to see in a more or less
despairing mood. For Evariste, she bent with an air of painstaking
absorption over her scarf, for she wanted to stir a sentiment of serious
affection in his heart.

Elodie was neither very young nor very pretty. She might have been
deemed plain at the first glance. She was a brunette, with an olive
complexion; under the broad white kerchief knotted carelessly about her
head, from which the dark lustrous ringlets escaped, her eyes of fire
gleamed as if they would burn their orbits. Her round face with its
prominent cheek-bones, laughing lips and rather broad nose, that gave it
a wild-wood, voluptuous express