Monsieur Maillekers now bustled forward, as if suddenly recolleting himself, and said:
"Ma'm'selle, votre mère have send um messenger in ver' mosh hurry—I take you, then?"
"A messenger!" exclaimed Marie, lifting her tearful face. "For what?"
"Ma'm'selle, I know nothing," the master replied, with a shake of the hand, which, however, contradicted his words.
"My father! My father!" she cried; and, springing to her feet, hastily put on her mantle, and, taking the master's arm, hurried eagerly homeward.
Her fears had been but too will founded. Her father, whose illness had been considered serious by no one but his wife, had grown suddenly worse. The physician had been called, and, by his direction, Marie was sent for at once. It was impossible, he said, that Monsieur Lefrette could survive the following day; and, though he made no such admission in words, it was plain that the sudden turn in the disease took him as much by surprise as it did Marie herself He was not mistaken now, however. His patient lingered, free from pain, until near noon on the morrow; when, without a struggle, be passed from life.
Two days afterward, the kind-hearted people of the good old ville attended his remains to their last resting-glace; and, having done him this final service, turned away toward home, speculating upon the extent of his widow's dower, and the amount of his daughter's inheritance. The prevailing opinion was that. Lefrette had died wealthy; and if the supposition was based rather too exclusively upon his part-ownership of certain company land-grants, whose value lay chiefly in the future, this fact only served to rebut one argument against the hypothesis, by accounting for the plain manner in which the deceased had lived.
Mr. Beman, who walked homeward with a knot of gossips, listened to the discussion in silence; but, on learning that all these castles were founded upon stock in the "——— Land and Emigration Company," Incontinently broke into a loud laugh, which not a little scandalized his grave companions. He gave no reason for his mirth, but,
