When Elizabeth invited her father to a prospect sylvan rather than
marine, to the shady path on the border of the wood between it and the
prison, Montier, easily drawn from any plan that concerned his own
inclination merely, let his daughter lead, and she was responsible for
all that followed in the history of that little family. So love defers
to love, with divine courtesy, through all celestial movements.

After playing a few airs, Montier's anticipated evening ended, and
another set in. The sympathies of a condition, the opposite to that of
which he had been so happily conscious, pressed too closely against
him. The musician could not, for the life of him, have played with
becoming spirit through any one of all the strains of victory he knew.

Near him, under a tulip-tree, sat Pauline, with her knitting in her
hand, the image of peace. Not so Elizabeth. She was doubting, troubled.
But when the bird her father's music moved to sing was still, she
spoke, as she had promised herself she would, asking a question, of
whose answer she had not the slightest doubt.

"Papa, do you know that Mr. Laval is going away?"

"Why, yes, that's the talk, I believe."

"Will they get somebody to take his place?"

"Of course. There's a prisoner on hand yet, you know,--and the house to
look after."

"A big house, too, and dreadful dreary," remarked the mother of