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 look so interested. It's not about myself. It's about Cerise."

"How can I look anything else?" asked the Abbé, whose face, to do him justice, never betrayed his thoughts or feelings. "Madame, or Mademoiselle, both are near and dear to me—too much so for my own repose."

He sighed, and laid his white hand on his breast. She was so accustomed to his manner that she never troubled herself whether he was in jest or earnest. Moreover, she was at present engrossed with her daughter's future, and proceeded thoughtfully.

"Cerise is a woman now, my cousin. Her girlhood is past, and she has arrived at an age when every woman should think of establishing herself in life. Pardon! that bouquet is in your way; put it down yonder in the window-*sill."

The Abbé rose and placed the flowers in the open window, whence a light air from without wafted their sweet and heavy perfume into the apartment.

When he reseated himself the Marquise had relapsed into silence. She was thinking deeply, with her eyes fixed on the dead musketeer in the picture.

The Abbé spoke first. He began in a low tone of emotion, that, if fictitious, was admirably assumed.

"It is not for me, perhaps, madame, to give an opinion on such matters as concern the affections. For me, the churchman, the celibate, the man of the world, whose whole utility to those he loves depends on subjection of his love at any cost—at any sacrifice; who must trample his feelings under foot, lest they rise and vanquish him, putting him to torture, punishment, and shame. My cousin, have not I seemed to you a man of marble rather than a creature of flesh and blood?"

The Marquise opened her black eyes wide. He had succeeded at least in rousing her attention, and continued in the same low, hurried voice.

"Can you not make allowance for a position so constrained and unnatural as mine? Can you not comprehend a devotion that exists out of, and apart from self? Is not the hideous Satyr peering from behind his tree at the nymph whose beauty awes him from approach, an object more touch