s. Take this, and be sure you say nothing about
it to any one, especially to Mademoiselle Adelaide;' and without
waiting for one word of thanks, he was about to hurry away, when he
was stopped by Mademoiselle de Varenne in person.

'Ah, Monsieur Lagnier,' she merrily exclaimed, 'this is not fair. I
hoped to have been the first; and yet I am glad that you forestalled
me,' she added, as she looked into the bright glistening eyes of the
old hairdresser. 'My father has just arrived in town, Lucille,' she
continued, after a short pause, 'and he is interested in you all. He
offers Andre the porter's lodge at the chateau, and I came here
immediately to tell you the good news. It is not very far from your
old home, and I am sure you will like it. Do not forget to take with
you this poor rose-tree; it looks like you, quite pale for want of
air. There! you must not thank me,' she exclaimed, as Madame Delmont,
Andre, and Lucille pressed eagerly forward to express their gratitude:
'it is I, rather, that should thank you. I never knew till now how
very happy I might be.'

And as Adelaide de Varenne pronounced these words, a bright smile
passed across her face. The old hairdresser gazed admiringly upon her,
and doubted for a moment whether the extraordinary loveliness he saw
owed any part of its charm to the lock of false hair.

CLOUDS OF LIGHT.

In March of the year 1843, a remarkable beam of light shot suddenly
out from the evening twilight, trailing itself along the surface of
the heavens, beneath the belt stars of Orion. That glimmering beam was
the tail of a comet just whisked into our northern skies, as the rapid
wanderer skirted their precincts in its journey towards the sun. To
the watchful eyes of our latitudes, the unexpected visitant presented
an aspect that was coy and modest in the extreme; its head, indeed,
was scarcely ever satisfactorily in sight. But it dealt far otherwise
with the more favoured climes of the south. At the Cape of Good Hope,
it was seen distinctly in full daylight, and almost touching the solar
disk; and at night appeared with the brilliancy of a first-class star,
with a luminous band flowing out from it to a distance some hundred
times longer than the moon's face is wide. Few persons who caught a
glimpse of that shining tail, either as it fitfully revealed itself in
our heavens, or as it steadily blazed upon the opposite hemisphere of
the earth, were led to form adequate notions of the m