estrain an exclamation of astonishment.

"But we have not a minute to lose," resumed the marquise. "I am dying
with impatience to carry off Fleur-de-Marie, and I have a cloak and warm
shawl for her in the carriage. So come, my child, come!" Then,
addressing the count, she said, "May I beg of you to give my address to
this brave woman, that she may be enabled to come to-morrow to say
good-bye to Fleur-de-Marie? That will oblige you to pay us a visit,"
continued Madame d'Harville, speaking to La Louve.

"Depend upon my coming, madame," replied the person addressed. "Since it
is to bid adieu to La Goualeuse, I should be grieved, indeed, if I were
to miss that last pleasure."

A few minutes after this conversation, Madame d'Harville and La
Goualeuse were on the road to Paris.

* * * * *

After witnessing the frightful death by which Jacques Ferrand atoned for
the heinous offences of his past life, Rodolph had returned home deeply
agitated and affected. After passing a long and sleepless night, he sent
to summon Sir Walter Murphy, in order to relieve his overcharged heart
by confiding to this tried and trusty friend the overwhelmingly painful
discovery of the preceding evening relative to Fleur-de-Marie. The
honest squire was speechless with astonishment; he could well understand
the death-blow this must be to the prince's best affections, and as he
contemplated the pale, careworn countenance of his unhappy friend, whose
red, swollen eyes and convulsed features amply bespoke the agony of his
mind, he ransacked his brain for some gleam of comfort, and his
invention for words of hope and comfort.

"Take courage, my lord," said he at last, drying his eyes, which, spite
of all his accustomed coolness, he had not been able to prevent from
overflowing, "take courage; yours is indeed an infliction, one that
mocks at all vain attempts at consolation; it is deep, lasting, and
incurable!"

"You are right; what I felt yesterday seems as nothing to my sense of
misery to-day."

"Yesterday, my lord, you were stunned by the blow that fell on you, but
as your mind dwells more calmly on it, so does the future seem more dark
and dispiriting. I can but say, rouse yourself, my lord, to bear it with
courage, for it is beyond all attempts at consolation."

"Yesterday the contempt and horror I felt for that woman,--whom may the
Great Being pardon, before whose tribunal she now stands,--mingled with
surpris