Lately when he took the hand I held out to him, that evening when Monsieur Bongrand proposed to me a husband, it was the first time, I swear to you, that I had ever given it.

He began with a jest when he blew me a kiss across the street, but since then our affection has never outwardly passed, as you well know, the narrowest limits.

But I will tell you,--you who read my soul except in this one region where none but the angels see,--well, I will tell you, this love has been in me the secret spring of many seeming merits; it made me accept my poverty; it softened the bitterness of my irreparable loss, for my mourning is more perhaps in my clothes now than in my heart--Oh, was I wrong?
can it be that love was stronger in me than my gratitude to my benefactor, and God has punished me for it?
But how could it be otherwise?
I respected in myself Savinien's future wife; yes, perhaps I was too proud, perhaps it is that pride which God has humbled.

God alone, as you have often told me, should be the end and object of all our actions." The abbe was deeply touched as he watched the tears roll down her pallid face.

The higher her sense of security had been, the lower she was now to fall.
"But," she said, continuing, "if I return to my orphaned condition, I shall know how to take up its feelings.