tion dancing before them in a fluttering white dress, with a crown of blue myosotis on her black hair, her face beautiful in her complete self-surrender to the joy of the passing moment, her partner making no attempt to conceal his admiration.
"He is really the only parti in the room."
"Yes, he has money; he can marry."
"He's welcome to it at that price,—the father running away from his country during a war. It is not a Villars who could do that."
"This was it! This was happiness!" Since she had worn long dresses Marie had caught it every now and then. In the fragment of a dream or in one of those fleeting day-moments that shoot like meteors at times across the serenity of a young girl's mind, diffusing a strange, supernatural sensation of causeless bliss, passing away with a sigh,—the absent-minded, causeless sigh of young girls, who, when asked about it, answer truthfully, "I do not know, it came just so;" a sensation of bliss which their age does not permit them to understand, but which they recognize distinctly afterwards, when it comes at the proper time;
