retired naval officer, who had been a great friend of my father. Captain Desplans, though much older than I, was a most affectionate husband, and we lived happily together for four years-until the Captain, having embarked all his fortune in a speculation, was ruined. The blow preyed greatly on his mind because of me. During a few months he tried hard to find employment, but his age for active work was past, so that he fell ill of despair and very soon died, leaving me unprovided for."

"You were absolutely destitute?" asked Vitali, who continued to glance at the notice of process.

"I had just ten thousand francs and my jewels."
"And no relatives or friends to give you a home?"

'No relatives at all," said Madame Desplans, shaking her head; "but I had one friend, Captain Lacroix, who had formerly been Lieutenant on board my husband's ship, and who is the person mentioned in that document. It is he who left me the property in dispute, and whose mourning I am wearing. And oh, when I think that those selfish relatives of his, who never once came near him in his illness, and who had done all they could to make his life wretched-when I think that they dare to accuse me of having been mercenary, false, depraved, and everything that's wicked, it's too much to bear: oh, oh !" and the young widow burst into tears.

"Console yourself, madam," said Vitali gently: "these law papers are often drawn up in brutal terms; but if the charges brought against you be false, there will be so much the more dishonour for your accusers.'

"False, why of course they are false; can you doubt it?" ejaculated Madame Desplans, looking up as if the merest hesitation were an outrage on her. "Why I devoted myself to Captain Lacroix, and spent six months nursing him when, as I have told you, I might have become his wife if I had pleased, and have inherited the whole of his property instead of the half which he left me. He was about forty years old when I first became acquainted with him, that is some six years younger than my husband. He frequently visited at our house, and I was not long in perceiving that he cherished a deep attachment towards me. He ended by declaring himself, and I ordered him not to let me see his face again, threatening if he returned to our house I would inform my husband of his conduct. He did go away and remained absent for two years; but so soon as my husband was dead he hastened back from Italy, where he was, and made me an offer of his hand. I felt no doubt that he sincerely loved me, but I was angry with him for his past behaviour; besides which he was a man of passionate and morose temper, with whom I knew it would have been impossible for me to live happy."

"This paper says that he was almost imbecile from confirmed intemperance."

"He became that after I had rejected him," said Madame Desplans, drying her eyes. "I believe he had given way to drink during his two years' absence, but upon my telling him that I would never be his wife

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. 196.

22.

he appears to have abandoned himself altogether; so that one day I received a raving letter from him in which he said that he was on his deathbed, that it was my cruelty that was killing him, but that I could restore him to life if I would go and see him and give him a word of hope. I confess that I was seized with terror, and with some remorse, for it is horrible to be told one is causing the death of a man whose only crime is to have loved you too well. Consulting only my first impulse, I hastened to Captain Lacroix's house, thinking that I would only stay there a few days to nurse him until he got well. But he lingered on for months, alternately lucid and delirious, but always quite incapable of taking care of himself, and in such a complete physical prostration that I awoke every morning with the conviction that he would be dead before night. When he did die at last it was found that by a will dated during the time while my husband was alive, he had left me half his fortune, that is a million francs, for he was a rich man, the son of a Marseilles merchant. Then it was that his relatives, who had left me to nurse him on his deathbed, fell upon me with that paper in which they charge me with having circumvented the unhappy man, with having tried to cozen him into marrying me; indeed they almost hint that when I found he would not yield to me, I ended by poisoning him, so as to become possessed of what he had left me the sooner. Ah, it is all too infamous, M. Vitali! Do I look like a scheming adventuress-do I look like a poisoner?"

She had half risen in uttering these words. Vitali lifted the lamp shade and the light fell full on her features. No, it was not the face of 'an adventuress nor of anything but what was sweet and good. She had large blue eyes, soft and candid as a child's, a tiny mouth which no falsehood could ever have defiled, and pale golden hair that seemed to crown her pure brow with an aureola of innocency like those on angels' heads. So at least thought Justin Vitali as his admiring gaze fell on the young face turnéd supplicatingly towards his. From that moment his destiny altered its course.

She had no need to continue clasping her hands as she did, for her cause was now right in his eyes, although all mankind should arise to accuse her. There was a look of protection in the glance he bent on her; then something like timidity stole into it, and a sensation which he could not account for, but which made his heart beat, took sudden possession of him. He turned towards his desk, caught up a pen, and to give himself a countenance, asked his visitor some desultory questions, her full names and address (her Christian name was Clotilde), whether she had a solicitor, what documents she could furnish to assist her defence, &c. All this time he felt nervous, and dared not look again at Madame Desplans. He stammered, and the consciousness that he was doing so made him redder : then he became aware that he was prolonging his questions with an inward purpose of preventing his visitor from going away-and this discovery filling him with confusion lest he should be detected, he said abruptly, by manner of closing the interview:

"Your solicitor will have to instruct me in due form, Madame, but your case is happily not a difficult one. By the way, am I to understand that you are entirely dependent for support on Captain Lacroix's legacy?"

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"Yes," answered the young widow artlessly; I brought my husband no dower, but though destitute I probably should not have accepted the Captain's money if his relatives had behaved with common kindness to me. I knew nothing about his will till it was opened after his death, and I was more surprised than anybody to find that a million had been bequeathed to me. But now that I have been so basely slandered I would maintain my rights at any cost, even if I were bound to throw the million into the sea as soon as I got it."

"That is natural," answered Vitali, who was too much of a Corsican not to sympathise with the craving for revenge. "The legacy is but a just acknowledgment of your devotedness in tending the dying man-besides, I suppose the Captain was aware that your husband had been ruined."

"He was not only aware of it, but he was himself partially the author of our ruin, and that is just the point, for in his will he treats the legacy as a retribution," exclaimed Madame Desplans animatedly. "I should tell you that Captain Lacroix often advised my husband on pecuniary matters, and once he counselled him to invest in a mining company which had been started in Corsica."

"In Corsica!" exclaimed Vitali with a start, while a deep pallor of a sudden overspread his face.

"Yes; and the company soon went to ruin, for it had been founded by a dishonest banker-one Della Sebbia. But what is the matter, M. Vitali?-you look unwell."

"Della Sebbia was not dishonest, I solemnly vow," said Vitali, standing up and speaking with considerable emotion. "In founding the mining company, Madame, he sincerely believed that he was promoting a genuine enterprise, and when the ruin overtook him and his shareholders he committed suicide."

"Oh dear!" exclaimed Madame Desplans, opening wide her blue eyes and assuming an air of contrition, "but I hope I have said nothingwas that M. della Sebbia ? "

"He was my father," said Justin Vitali, whose brow contracted as in pain.

There was a moment's silence. The young widow had risen, and the Corsican and his client stood for a brief space close together with downcast faces, neither speaking. Madame Desplans broke the silence by saying, in a tone of compassion and regret :

"I am truly sorry, M. Vitali-I could not guess-but this will not prevent you from defending me, will it?"

"That is a question for yourself to decide," answered Vitali, a little bitterly. "But if you cannot believe in the honesty of the father, I

would advise you not to submit your fortune and reputation to the care of the son."

"I will believe anything you tell me, M. Vitali," said Madame Desplans, without hesitation; then she added, with a half smile, "but, unintentionally as it may be, your father was the cause of our ruin. He was the cause that I am standing before you to-day; so you owe me a kind of reparation. Prevent me from being despoiled of Captain Lacroix's legacy, and we shall be quits."

III.

What momentous events may not happen between two paragraphs of a letter interrupted for an hour! When Vitali wrote to his mother that he would devote himself to clearing his father's memory "to the exclusion of all other objects or ambitions," he said what he meant: when he resumed his letter, this passage in it was no longer true. His filial piety had not lessened, but a new element of hopes and fears had entered his life. His main object at present was to clear Clotilde Desplans; and when he had done that, what then? Here he asked himself with uneasiness why he should shrink from looking to the time when the professional relations between himself and the young widow should be at an end, and when perhaps she would go away and be never more seen of him? His life would become a cheerless blank again then, as it had been before she had come to him like a sunbeam into a prison cell. He had looked upon her, and it seemed to him that her face must for evermore remain shining before his mind's eyes.

When she had gone, he carefully read through the writ of process with which she had been served, and which, like all such documents in France, was a most elaborate indictment, covering several pages of stamped paper. The terms of it made his blood boil. Accustomed as he was to the calumnious malice of litigants, to the diabolical ingenuity with which a plaintiff's lawyer can pervert the meaning of the simplest acts and words so that they may be made to bear a felonious significance, Justin Vitali nevertheless thought that slander had never been pushed to greater length, and humanity, honour, decency, and common sense never been more outrageously set at defiance, than in this document, which accused Clotilde Desplans of being a false intriguer and swindler. He foresaw that the case would make an immense noise, for, in a country where women's influence is paramount, the public have a great interest in knowing what constitutes an exercise of undue influence; then the magnitude of the sum at stake would lend importance to the suit, besides greatly heating the plaintiffs' pleas, for Frenchmen do fight with exceeding desperation for a million francs.

All the other briefs which Vitali had in hand at this time lapsed into the background of his preoccupations; and on the morrow of

Madame Desplans' visit, it cost him real physical suffering to go into court and give his attention during three hours to a knotty insurance case. He had scarcely slept through the night from thinking of the extraordinary concourse of circumstances which had made him morally the debtor of Madame Desplans, whom his father had unwittingly ruined. He deemed it nobly generous of her to have said that if he won her suit she would consider they were quits; and most magnanimous of her to have shown such readiness in believing in his father's innocence—a point upon which all the world, ay, his most intimate friends (with whom he had quarrelled on that account) remained sceptics. How could he for a moment mistrust the guiltlessness of one who displayed such confidence in him and his? how could he help longing for the day when he should tear her name spotless as a jewel from the ignoble hands who sought to soil it, or help fretting at the inevitable delays which obliged her to remain under the cloud of foul aspersions for weeks at least, perhaps for months?

In the luncheon interval of the insurance case, Vitali stayed in court and wrote Madame Desplans a letter, putting her some questions which he had omitted to ask on the previous day, and sending some general remarks upon the conduct of her case, with the intention of reassuring her. He did not notice that this letter far exceeded in length and in style the usual manner of a business communication, but in all he said he wished to pave the way to an offer to place his purse at her disposal until the trial was ended. It had occurred to him in the night that Madame Desplans' circumstances must be wofully straitened, and that she possibly had not enough to live on in comfort for the next few weeks, setting aside the defrayal of expenses attendant upon the preliminaries of every lawsuit. He was wording his proposal with infinite delicacy, and bidding Madame Desplans regard any loan she would. accept as a simple advance on the fortune which she would shortly recover, when one of the most eminent avoués in Rouen crossed the court and touched his shoulder. It was M. Boidoux, to whom he had been indebted for many a brief.

"Vitali," said M. Boidoux, "I sent you a big brief yesterday, but don't go to work on it yet, for it will have to be amended, as the case is going to be transferred from a civil suit into a criminal action."

"Very well," replied Vitali, nodding absently. "I haven't yet looked at yesterday's briefs. Who are the parties to this one?"

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Heulard, Viel, and some others, versus Desplans, a young widow, and we are for the plaintiffs."

"What?" exclaimed the Corsican, starting as if he had been hit.

"You seem to have heard of the case," observed M. Boidoux, taking a pinch of snuff. "We thought at first we had to do merely with undue influence, but circumstances have come to light which show there was downright murder. Madame Desplans poisoned

"Who told you that?" ejaculated Vitali, with so energetic an expression of indignant fury that M. Boidoux recoiled.