if I had been idle. I think Eugene will be
pleased with our modest home."

Rivarol threw a hasty glance round the
room, which seemed to take in all and
everything it contained.

     "Séjour fait pour le bonheur,"
     (A home made for happiness),

he exclaimed. He was strongly moved, his
voice was husky, and his colour went and
came. Fixing a look on Coralie's flushed,
hopeful, expectant face, he rapidly uttered
some words about pressing business, and with
one hasty bow darted away.

"Monsieur, Monsieur! " screamed Coralie
after him, on the stairs. She had some new
question to put to him, as to in what exact
place he had left Eugene, but Monsieur was
already out of hearing.

"What a hurry he is in; I shall tell
Eugene." And with this determination, the
stranger vanished from her thoughts, which
returned to their former train. Nevertheless,
she had gathered one certainty, that her
betrothed could not be with her before next
day.

To-morrow!—how long! And yet it felt
like a relief. Anticipation long on the stretch,
as the intensely desired meeting nears,
becomes somewhat akin to dread. So, the
porteress, who was always running up on one
pretext or another, and other female neighbours
also all— in remarkably high spirits
were told that M. Eugene could not arrive
before the morrow.

The repeating this assurance constantly was
Coralie's only conversation with her humble
friends that day. Her heart was full of
disquiet, and when alone she often muttered to
herself some of Rivarol's speeches, harping
on " Séjour fait pour le bonheur," or counting
over her little treasures in a dazed sort of way.

On the Wednesday following, towards
evening, as Madame Ferey and her daughter
Pauline, one of Coralie's former pupils, were
sitting together, talking pleasantly over
Coralie's happy prospects, a ring came to the
door of the apartment. Madame opened the
door herself, and there stood a figure which
for a few seconds she did not recognise. The
shrunken height, the stoop which brought
the shoulders forward like two points, the
shawl which hung over them in a wretched
dangle, the blanched cheek and lip, the sunken
eye, the premature lines and angles of age
all bore the unmistakeable impress of dire
calamity and forlorn despair.

"Chère Mademoiselle Coralie?" at length
burst from Madame Ferey, in a voice of
sorrowing surprise. And taking her by the
hand, she led her in silence to a seat by the
fireside, and then folding one of the girl's
hands in her own, she asked in a whisper,
"What has happened?"

"Dead!" said Coralie, holding out a folded
paper to Madame Ferey, and averting her
face as if the sight of it scorched her.

It was a most touching letter from Jean
Rivarol, asking forgiveness for his courage
having failed before the purpose of his visit
to her on the preceding day. At sight of her,
he had not had the heart to speak; his
tongue had refused to tell her the fatal
tidings. Eugene had fallen in a skirmish for
which he had volunteered only two days
before the regiment embarked for France.
Jean Rivarol had been by his side, and
received his last instructions. He had carried
his friend's body within the French lines, and
given it Christian burial near Oran, putting
up a rude cross bearing the name of Coralie's
affianced husband, to mark the place where
he lay, with a wreath of immortelles, to show
that a friend had mourned over that distant
grave.

God alone knew what the poor widowed
heart went through, for Coralie wrestled
with her first grief alone; no eye had been
allowed to watch those death-throes of
happiness. What can any one say to the
bereaved, but "Lord, we beseech thee to
have mercy."

Good Madame Ferey and Pauline cried as
if their hearts would break, but Coralie shed
no tear. She sat in a listless attitude, her
eyes fixed on vacancy, as if looking at and
seeing only her own thoughts.

"And when did you get this terrible
letter, my dear?" at length asked Madame.

"I do not know—a long time ago—just
when I was expecting him."

Madame Ferey looked up alarmed at this
answer.

"I mean the day before yesterday," said
Coralie, making an effort to collect her
thoughts." The day before yesterday—Monday.
An age of grief has passed over me
since then." And now, having broke silence,
she went on talking: "I have lived in him—
a love of so many, many years—it is very
hard. I may say, no action of my life,
however trifling, not even the gathering a flower,
but was done with the thought of him in my
heart. He was the rudder of my life. And
so he will be still. For, Madame Ferey, I
have thought and thought, and settled it all
in my mind. I cannot remain in Paris, to
see ever around me all that I had prepared
for his return—all I did for him; I should go
mad."

Madame Ferey indeed began to fear she
might, and concurred in the necessity of a
removal.

"You feel that," said Coralie, eagerly;
"you are a real friend."

"And where would you go?"

"To Oran." And then Coralie told her
plan. It was a wild, adventurous scheme,
particularly some years back.

But Madame Ferey made no objections,
feeling it better to let the poor girl follow
any decision she had come to for herself, and
believing that the difficulties of carrying it
into eifect would give time for consideration.