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returned with her sister to Paris, and, for the next week, the whole hôtel was hurry and confusion with the approaching nuptials. Her manner to Francesca was very unequal. Sometimes it had all the frankness of their early intimacy; at other times it was forbidding, and even petulant. On the very night before her marriage, when, at a late hour, Francesca was seeking her own room, as she passed along the corridor, Marie's door opened, and Marie herself appeared.

"I knew your step—do come in, for the last time here."

Francesca, softened by the kindly tone, and still more by observing that the other had been