irrepressible step-mother herself, at the imminent choice of swords or pistols her indiscretion had brought upon him, and the probable eventualities of the morrow; but last, and longest, he looked at a crown of blue myosotis over eyes that seemed the eyes of a thousand women in one, and at a face made from the core of his own heart, and at the history of it which he had overheard from his station near the parlor door.
And Marie Modeste; the music, the inexorable music, carried her around and around, on and on, until, horribly awake, yet expiring with fatigue, the early church-bells dissolved the infernal charm. She sank like a feather into a sleep of eider-down, where dreams came to tease her with sudden fallings, or with hints and suggestions touched her sensibilities to the coloring of a blush, the starting of a tear; her feet twitching and moving still in the waltz,—the one waltz with the young Parisian.
Even a soirée, however unusual the occurrence, could not disturb the equilibrium of Monsieur Goupilleau's notarial existence. He descended at his habitual hour the next morn-
