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Rh must appear to him. Still, with what a happy flutter of the heart I flung myself into my fauteuil that night, to think over the events of the evening!

"Time passed on, and François became my avowed lover. About two months after our first meeting, I was taken ill, and of the small-pox. The holy saints forgive me for the horror with which I heard my disease pronounced! I prayed in my most inward soul that I might die rather than become unlovely in his sight: I have been justly punished. With what a strange mixture of joy and dread did I hear his voice, almost hourly, in the antechamber, making the most anxious inquiries! Others shunned the poisoned atmosphere, but François feared it not. What prayers I implored them to make in my name that he would refrain from such visits!

"One day he came not: I was told, and truly, that business the most imperative required his personal attendance; yet I could not force the ghastly terror of his illness from my mind. I dared not tempt my fate by content—the agony which I suffered seemed a sort of expiation. The next day I heard his voice, and fainted. Francesca, it is an awful thing thus to allow your destiny to be bound up in that of another—to live