I have not yet attained my majority, but shall do so in five months and three days, when I shall inherit my mother's fortune.

My father is wealthy, but old and infirm.

From four to six in the afternoon of the next few days I will be in a carriage at the corner of the Place de Petit Pont.
"GASTON DE GANDELU." The cynical insolence of the letter, together with its entire want of form, was a perfect example of the style affected by those loiterers about town, known to the Parisians as "mashers;" and yet Rose did not appear at all disgusted by the reception of such an unworthily worded proposal, but, on the contrary, rather pleased by its contents.

"If I only dared," mused she, with a sigh,--"ah, if I only dared!" For a time she sat deeply immersed in thought, with her face buried in her hands, until she was aroused from her meditations by the sound of an active and youthful step upon the creaking stairs.

"He has come back," she gasped; and with the agile movement of a cat she again concealed the letter in its hiding-place, and she had scarcely done so, when Paul Violaine entered the miserable room.