representations as were likely to be most effective. With what admirable
tact he avoided panegyric of Frank as the mere individual, and drew him
rather as the type, the ideal of what a woman in Beatrice's position
might desire, in the safety, peace, and Honour of a home, in the trust
and constancy and honest confiding love of its partner! He did not paint
an elysium,--he described a haven; he did not glowingly delineate a hero
of romance,--he soberly portrayed that Representative of the Respectable
and the Real which a woman turns to when romance begins to seem to her
but delusion. Verily, if you could have looked into the heart of the
person he addressed, and heard him speak, you would have cried
admiringly, "Knowledge is power; and this man, if as able on a larger
field of action, should play no mean part in the history of his time."

Slowly Beatrice roused herself from the reveries which crept over her as
he spoke,--slowly, and with a deep sigh, and said,

"Well, well, grant all you say! at least before I can listen to so
honourable a love, I must be relieved from the base and sordid pleasure
that weighs on me. I cannot say to the man who wooes me, 'Will you pay
the debts of the daughter of Franzini, and the widow of Di Negra?'"

"Nay, your debts, surely, make so slight a portion of your dowry."

"But the dowry has to be secured;" and here, turning the tables upon her
companion, as the apt proverb expresses it, Madame di Negra extended her
hand to Randal, and said in the most winning accents, "You are, then,
truly and sincerely my friend?"

"Can you doubt it?"