AURORA'S LAST PICAYUNE Not often in Aurora's life had joy and trembling so been mingled in one cup as on this day.

Clotilde wept; and certainly the mother's heart could but respond; yet Clotilde's tears filled her with a secret pleasure which fought its way up into the beams of her eyes and asserted itself in the frequency and heartiness of her laugh despite her sincere participation in her companion's distresses and a fearful looking forward to to-morrow.
Why these flashes of gladness?
If we do not know, it is because we have overlooked one of her sources of trouble.

From the night of the _bal masque_ she had--we dare say no more than that she had been haunted; she certainly would not at first have admitted even so much to herself.

Yet the fact was not thereby altered, and first the fact and later the feeling had given her much distress of mind.

Who he was whose image would not down, for a long time she did not know.