See here," she said, unclosing one of her hands which she had
kept tightly shut, and showing the little green and gold fish
Horace Graham had given her years before, "I promised never to
part with this, but I have nothing else--and--and I love you so
much--will you have it?"

"No, no," said the old man, smiling and shaking his head,
"keep thy promise, and thy treasure, my child; I do not
require that to remind me of thee. Farewell!"

He put her gently out of the door as her father's step was
heard coming upstairs, and closed it after her. She never did
see him again, for he died in less than two years after their
parting.

M. Linders went to Homburg, to Baden, to Wiesbaden, but he was
no longer the man he had been before his illness; he won
largely, indeed, at times, but he lost as largely at others,
playing with a sort of reckless, feverish impatience, instead
of with the steady coolness that had distinguished him
formerly. Old acquaintance who met him said that M. Linders
was a broken man, and that his best days were over: men who
had been accustomed to bet on his success, shrugged their
shoulders, and sought for some steadier and luckier player to
back; he himself, impatient of ill-luck, and of continual
defeat in the scenes of his former triumphs, grew restless and
irritable, wandered from place to place in search of better
fortune and better health, and at length, at the end of a
fortnight's stay at Wiesbaden, after winning a large sum at
_rouge-et-noir_, and losing half of it the next day, announced