was about to lift it something which seemed to have been dropped upon the
floor, and to have rolled beneath the valance of the bed, touched her
hand. It was a thing to which a riband was attached--an ivory
miniature--and she picked it up wondering. She stood up gazing at it, in
such bewilderment to find her eyes upon it that she scarce knew what she
did. She did not mean to pry; she would not have had the daring so to do
if she had possessed the inclination. But the instant her eyes told her
what they saw, she started and blushed as she had never blushed before in
her tame life. The warm rose mantled her cheeks, and even suffused the
neck her chaste kerchief hid. Her eye kindled with admiration and an
emotion new to her indeed.

"How beautiful!" she said. "He is like a young Adonis, and has the
bearing of a royal prince! How can it--by what strange chance hath it
come here?"

She had not regarded it more than long enough to have uttered these
words, when a fear came upon her, and she felt that she had fallen into
misfortune.

"What must I do with it?" she trembled. "What will she say, whether she
knows of its being within the chamber or not? She will be angry with me
that I have dared to touch it. What shall I do?"

She regarded it again with eyes almost suffused. Her blush and the
sensibility of her emotion gave to her plain countenance a new liveliness
of tint and expression.

"I will put it back where I found it," she said, "and the one who knows
it will find it later. It cannot be she--it cannot be she! If I laid it