Ursula

Savinien," cried the girl, bursting into tears. "Yes, my good friend," she said, sobbing, "a voice tells me he is as noble in heart as he is in race. He has not only told me that he loves me alone, but he has proved it in a hundred delicate ways, and by restraining heroically his ardent feelings. Lately when he took the hand I held out to him, that evening when Monsieur Bongrand proposed to me a husband, it was the first time, I swear to you, that I had ever given it. He began with a jest when he blew me a kiss across the street, but since then our affection has never outwardly passed, as you well know, the narrowest limits. But I will tell you,—you who read my soul except in this one region where none but the angels see,—well, I will tell you, this love has been in me the secret spring of many seeming merits; it made me accept my poverty; it softened the bitterness of my irreparable loss, for my mourning is more perhaps in my clothes now than in my heart—Oh, was I wrong? can it be that love was stronger in me than my gratitude to my benefactor, and God has punished me for it? But how could it be otherwise? I respected in myself Savinien's future wife; yes, perhaps I was too proud, perhaps it is that pride which God has humbled. God alone, as you have often told me, should be the end and object of all our actions."
    The abbe was deeply touched as he watched the tears roll down her pallid face. The higher her sense of security had been, the lower she was now to fall.
    "But," she said, continuing, "if I return to my orphaned condition, I shall know how to take up its feelings. After all, could I have tied a mill-stone round the neck of him I love? What can he do here? Who am I to bind him to me? Besides, do I not love him with a friendship so divine that I can bear the loss of my own happiness and my hopes? You know I have often blamed myself for letting my hopes rest upon a grave, and for knowing they were waiting on that poor old lady's death. If Savinien is rich and happy with another I have enough to pay for my entrance to a convent, where I shall go at once. There can no more be two loves in a woman's heart than there can be two masters in heaven, and the life of a religious is attractive to me."
    "He could not let his mother go alone to Rouvre," said the abbe, gently.
    "Do not let us talk of that, my dear good friend," she answered. "I will write to-night and set him free. I am glad to have to close the windows of this room," she continued, telling her old friend of the anonymous letters, but declaring that she would not allow any inquiries to be made as to who her unknown lover might be.
    "Why! it was an anonymous letter that first took Madame de Portenduere to Rouvre," cried the abbe. "You are annoyed for some object by evil persons."
    "How can that be? Neither Savinien nor I have injured any one; and I am no longer an obstacle to the prosperity of others."
    "Well, well, my child," said the abbe, quietly, "let us profit by this tempest, which has scattered our little circle, to put the library in order. The books are still in heaps. Bongrand and I want to get them in order; we wish to make a search among them. Put your trust in God, and remember also that in our good Bongrand and in me you have two devoted friends."
    "That is much, very much," she said, going with him to the threshold of the door, where she stretched out her neck like a bird looking over its nest, hoping against hope to see Savinien.
    Just then Minoret and Goupil, returning from a walk in the meadows, stopped as they passed, and the colossus spoke to Ursula.
    "Is anything the matter, cousin; for we are still cousins, are we not? You seem changed."
    Goupil looked so ardently at Ursula that she was frightened, and went back into the house without replying.
    "She is cross," said Minoret to the abbe.
    "Mademoiselle Mirouet is quite right not to talk to men on the threshold of her door," said the abbe; "she is too young—"
    "Oh!" said Goupil. "I am told she doesn't lack lovers."
    The abbe bowed hurriedly and went as fast as he could to the Rue des Bourgeois.
    "Well," said Goupil to Minoret, "the thing is working. Did you notice how pale she was. Within a fortnight she'll have left the town—you'll see."
    "Better have you for a friend than an enemy," cried Minoret, frightened at the atrocious grin which gave to Goupil's face the diabolical expression of the Mephistopheles of Joseph Brideau.
    "I should think so!" returned Goupil. "If she