friend. "Go and play at Les Graces with
Louise."

"And so, as I was saying," continues the
oldest girl of the school, " Madame called her
down to give her the letter; and you can't
think how awfully she blushed. I am sure she
knew the hand."

And now the confidante wonders if
Mademoiselle can be really engaged, and who to?
None of the masters, that's certain; for she
never speaks to any of them, not even to
Mons. Ernest, the drawing-master, who has
more than once hinted what a capital study
Mademoiselle Fischer's head would make.
The two girls think a great deal of this
Mons. Ernest. School-girls generally do place
a glory round the head of one or other of the
gentlemen who have the honour of teaching
them. A pretty young creature once owned
herself to be desperately in love, as she called
it, with her harp-master, a little elderly man
in yellow slippers, who thoroughly despised
her for her want of musical talent.

Coralie was tall, and had a commanding
carriage; her large eyes were black, a velvet
black, soft not sparkling, with clear depths
into which it was pleasant to gaze; her
complexion, of a rich brown; and her well-shaped
head, a perfect marvel of glossy braids and
plaits. An elegant and accomplished girl,
she was nevertheless filling the situation of
under-teacher in Madame Sévèré's school,
with a salary of three hundred francs, or
twelve pounds a-year, for which she engaged
to teach grammar, history, geography,
writing, cyphering, and needle-work of every
description, to about twenty pupils, whom she
was expected never to lose sight of during the
day (not even in their play hours) and more-
over, being required every morning to brush
the hair of this score of obstreperous schoolgirls.
The half of Sunday once a fortnight
was the only holiday Coralie was allowed
during the half-year.

A terrible life this for a sensitive, well-
educated girl of twenty-two. However,
Coralie had endured it unflinchingly for four
years, and looked plump and rosy still.
Coralie was waiting with all the faith of a
pure heart for the return of her affianced
husband. A year more, and he would be
back; and as that thought rises, how she
bows her blushing face, and lays her hand
over her heart, as if the strong beats must be
seen by some of the tiresome mother's cherubs
round her chair.

Coralie was an orphan. Her father, a
medical man, had died when the cholera was
raging in Paris. He had been respected by
his professional brethren, and as a matter of
course beloved by his clientelle. What doctor
is not?—the family doctor, we mean.

Poor Dr. Fischer died, just as his
prosperous days had set in, leaving a widow and
a little girl to the tender mercies of the
world. And the wind was tempered to these
shorn lambs; some of the many kind hearts
of Dr. Fischer's patients obtaining for the
widow the right to sell tobacco and snuff,
which enabled that poor lady to support
herself, and have her Coralie educated.

When Coralie was seventeen, Eugene
Peroud one day came to pay his respects to
Madame Fischer. He called himself Coralie's
uncle, being the son of Dr. Fischer's step-
mother by her first marriage. Madame
Fischer therefore called him mon frère, and
Mademoiselle Coralie at the beginning said,
mon oncle, very respectfully.

This state of things lasted but a very short
time. Though there was abundance of reason
for questioning the relationship, there was
none at all for doubting that M. Peroud
was very handsome and only twenty-seven.
The assumed uncleship allowed of unusual
intimacy, and Coralie's young heart was
irretrievably gone before she knew she had
a heart to lose. Eugene left off petting her,
and distressed her greatly by calling her
Mademoiselle. Was he angry with her?

After various hesitations, whether "to put
it to the touch, to win, or lose it all," Eugene
made the mamma acquainted with the
condition of his affections. A cabinet council
of the confessor and one or two distant
relations of the Fischer family was held, and
then it was graciously announced to the
anxious lover that his cause was won. Then
it came out, how very stupidly every one had
acted in making Eugene into an uncle; for,
though it was allowed on all hands that he
was a mere pretence of an uncle, still the
pretence was substantial enough for the
confessor to declare that a dispensation in form
must be obtained, before the marriage could
be solemnised. The lovers were vexed and
provoked; but it must be owned, that as they
met daily to talk over their plans and
provocations time did not hang long on their
hands.

As it always happens, no sooner is a
marriage decided on, than a host of difficulties
show their hydra heads in the paths to its
realisation. The spiritual maternal affection
of the Church of Rome, produced number
one; and the temporal maternal affection of
Madame Fischer, number two; and the bride-
groom's love of his profession, number three.
But Coralie was a girl in a thousand, without
any selfishness in her love, at least, if there
were a slight dash of it, it was a selfishness à
deux. The case was this, Eugene Peroud,
though of a good bourgeois family, was, at the
time we are writing of, only a sergeant in
one of the regiments of the line. It is a common
practice in France, for young men, very
respectably connected to enter the army as
privates, and to work their way up to a
commission. Now Eugene, besides having every
reason to expect his promotion within a
reasonable time, had a life rent of a thousand
francs a-year—about forty pounds of
English money, and so Coralie considered she
was making so rich a marriage, for a girl