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 If only Cartouche were there—some one to whom she could pour out her trembling, agitated heart! But Cartouche was not there, nor would he come. And suddenly, for the first time, something of the fierceness of maidenhood overwhelmed Fifi—a feeling that Cartouche should, after all, seek her—that, if he loved her, as she knew he did above everything on earth, he should speak and not shame her by his silence.

Then, the conviction that Cartouche preferred her good to his, that he thought she would be happier married to another and a different man, and held himself honestly unworthy to marry her, brought, a flood of tenderness to her heart. She had seen Cartouche turn red and pale when she kissed him, and avoid her innocent familiarities, and she knew well enough what it meant. But if he would not come, nor speak, nor write,—and everybody, even the Holy Father, was urging her to marry Louis Bourcet; and a great, strong chain of circumstances was dragging her toward the same end—oh, what a day of emotions it was to Fifi!

She knew not how it passed, nor what she said or did, nor what she ate and drank; she only