whose presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event. That the
Athenaeum had mentioned a rumour that Graham Vane was the author of a
political pamphlet which, published anonymously, had made no
inconsiderable sensation. Isaura sent to England for that pamphlet: the
subject was somewhat dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was
scarcely of the eloquence which wins the admiration of women; and yet she
learned every word of it by heart.

We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which she hailed as an
approach to him was daily making her more remote. The sweet labours she
undertook for that celebrity continued to be sweetened yet more by secret
associations with the absent one. How many of the passages most admired
could never have been written had he been never known!

And she blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the
absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing
torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de
Grantmesnil's command--did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into
green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal by-
world.

But still the one image which reigned over her human heart moved beside
her in the gardens of fairyland.




CHAPTER IV.

Isaura was seated in her pretty salon, with the Venosta, M. Savarin, the