least fitted to render her happy, is that in which she has lost all hope
of happiness in another?"

"Is it indeed so?" murmured Graham--"Ay, I can conceive it."

"And have you so little comprehension of the necessities which that fame,
that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of
genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless?
No matter how pure her life, can she guard it from the slander of envious
tongues? Will not all her truest friends--would not you, if you were her
brother--press upon her by all the arguments that have most weight with
the woman who asserts independence in her modes of life, and yet is wise
enough to know that the world can only judge of virtue by its shadow--
reputation, not to dispense with the protection which a husband can alone
secure? And that is why I warn you, if it be yet time, that in resigning
your own happiness you may destroy Isaura's. She will wed another, but
she will not be happy. What a chimera or dread your egotism as man
conjures up! Oh! forsooth, the qualities that charm and delight a world
are to unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man. Fie on you!--fie!"

Whatever answer Graham might have made to these impassioned reproaches
was here checked.

Two men on horseback stopped the carriage. One was Enguerrand de
Vandemar, the other was the Algerine Colonel whom we met at the supper
given at the Maison Doree by Frederic Lemercier.

"Pardon, Madame Morley," said Enguerrand; "but there are symptoms of a
mob-epidemic a little further up the fever began at Belleville, and is
threatening the health of the Champs Elysees. Don't be alarmed--it may