with a faint smile, "that his progresses must be announced by so dignified an avant-courier?"
"Neither he nor his father, Marie," said her mother, somewhat severely, " is the proper subject of a jest—from you."
Marie smiled again, as if the qualification "from you" implied only a special prohibition. But the rebuke was too sadly true to afford amusement; and without replying, she walked to the window, with her lip quivering from far different emotions. Her mother watched her for some moments, as if waiting for her to speak, but at last broke the silence herself.
"You do not ask," said she, "how it is that Napoleon can reäppear openly, without risk?"
"I suppose he has been tried," Marie answered, with a curl of the lip, "and acquitted on the usual plea of self-defense."
"No," her mother replied, glancing keenly at her; "it is because Monsieur de Cheville is out of danger."
"Scarcely, I should suppose," returned Marie, "so long as the man lives whose hatred could prompt such an assault!"
"It does not become you to say so, Marie!"
Again the daughter's head drooped in acknowledgment of the just rebuke. Napoleon Le Vert was her affianced husband; and whatever would have been her feelings toward Coron de Cheville, had she given them sway, she was under a bond, whose penalty was her dead father's faith, to justify, or at least not to condemn, the acts of him to whom the solemn compact had assigned her. We will not undertake to inquire how her heart rebelled against this hard necessity, nor how much Le Vert's offense was increased in enormity to her view, by the fact that it had been committed against De Cheville. Let it be sufficient that, in spite of all her mother's exhortations, and the severe schooling of her own best reason, it was thus increased; and that, before the effort to repress her indignation was required, she could never have conceived its difficulty.
The shadows were lengthening when she went to the window; and while she stood, buried in thought of no pleasant nature, the sun dropped below the horizon, and the shades of evening gathered on the street before her. The day had been intensely warm, but now
