Was the deceased married ?" "Oh, yes,--to an Englishwoman." "She had lovers, perhaps ?" "Pooh, lovers! The happiest couple ever known; you should have seen them together! I dined there last week." "It is strange," said the lawyer.
"And he was getting on so well," muttered a hungry-looking man.
"And his place is vacant!" repeated the employee, as he quitted the crowd abstractedly.
In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia alone, and in her own usual morning-room.

The officer appointed to such tasks by the French law has performed his visit, and made his notes, and expressed condolence with the widow, and promised justice and retribution, and placed his seal on the locks till the representatives of the heir-at-law shall arrive; and the heir-at-law is the very boy who had succeeded so unexpectedly to the wealth of Jean Bellanger the contractor! But Lucretia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the rest.
An open box is on the floor, into which her hand drops noiselessly a volume in manuscript.

On the forefinger of that hand is a ring, larger and more massive than those usually worn by women,--by Lucretia never worn before.

Why should that ring have been selected with such care from the dead man's hoards?
Why so precious the dull opal in that cumbrous setting?
From the hand the volume drops without sound into the box, as those whom the secrets of the volume instruct you to destroy may drop without noise into the grave.

The trace of some illness, recent and deep, nor conquered yet, has ploughed lines in that young countenance, and dimmed the light of those searching eyes.