"How!" echoed Rameau; "how! But do you not see--or at least, do you not
conjecture--this journal of which Savarin speaks contains my present and
my future? Present independence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay,--
and who shall say? renown beyond that of the mere writer. Behind the
gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice
unperceived arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given
to the men who help obscurely to build it,--to men like me." Here,
drawing her hand into his own, fixing on her the most imploring gaze of
his dark persuasive eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his
adjuration, he added: "Plead for me with your whole mind and heart; use
your uttermost influence with the illustrious writer whose pen can assure
the fates of my journal."

Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, who announced
unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham Vane.




CHAPTER X.

The Englishman halted at the threshold. His eye, passing rapidly over
the figure of Savarin reading in the window-niche, rested upon Rameau and
Isaura seated on the same divan, he with her hand clasped in both his
own, and bending his face towards hers so closely that a loose tress of
her hair seemed to touch his forehead.

The Englishman halted, and no revolution which changes the habitudes and
forms of States was ever so sudden as that which passed without a word in
the depths of his unconjectured heart. The heart has no history which