will bring irreparable ruin upon me. Oh! you don't know you don't understand me. You can't help but call me insane; but you will feel it - you will know all, when you see me stretched at your feet with my brains scattered. it's now a question of life or death! Farewell!' Angela! "Therewith the Chevalier rushed off in a state of perfect despair. Vertua saw through him completely; he knew what change had come over him; he endeavored to make his lovely Angela understand that certain circumstances might arise which would make it necessary to accept the Chevalier's present. Angela trembled with dread lest she should understand her father. She did not conceive how it would ever be possible to meet the Chevalier on any other terms save those of contempt. Destiny, which often ripens into shape deep down in the human heart, without the mind being aware of it, permitted that to take place which had never been thought of, never been dreamed of. "The Chevalier was like a man suddenly wakened up out of a fearful dream; he saw himself standing on the brink of the abyss of ruin, and stretched out his arms in vain towards the bright shining figure which had appeared to him, not, however, to save him no but to remind him of his damnation. "To the astonishment of all Paris, Chevalier Menars' bank disappeared from the gambling house; nobody ever saw him again; and hence the most diverse and extraordinary rumors were current, each of them more false than the rest. The Chevalier shunned all society; his love found expression in the deepest and most unconquerable despondency. It happened, however, that old Vertua and his daughter one day suddenly crossed his path in one of the dark and lonely alleys of the garden of Malmaison. "Angela, who thought she could never look upon the Chevalier without contempt and abhorrence, felt strangely moved on seeing him so deathly pale, terribly shaken with trouble, hardly daring in his shy respect to raise his eyes. She knew quite well that ever since that ill-omened night he had altogether relinquished gambling and effected a complete revolution in his habits of life. She, she alone had brought all this about, she had saved the Chevalier from ruin-could anything be more flattering to her woman's vanity? Hence it was that, after Vertua had exchanged the usual complimentary remarks with the Chevalier, Angela asked in a tone of gentle and sym pathetic pity, What is the matter with you, Chevalier Menars? You are looking very ill and full of trouble. I am sure you ought to consult a physician.' "It is easy to imagine how Angela's words fell like a comforting ray of hope upon the Chevalier's heart. From that moment he was not like the same man. He lifted up his head; he was able to speak in those tones, full of the real inward nature of the man, with which he had formerly won all hearts. Vertua exhorted him to come and take possession of the house he had won. "Yes, Signor Vertua,' cried the Chevalier, with animation, 'yes, that I will do. I will call upon you to-morrow; but let us carefully weigh and discuss all the conditions of the transfer, even though it should last some months.' "Be it so then, Chevalier,' replied Vertua, smiling. 'I fancy that there will arise a good many things to be discussed, of which we at the present moment have no idea.' The Chevalier, being thus comforted at heart, could not fail to develop again all the charms of manner which had once been so peculiarly his own before he was led astray by his insane, pernicious passion for gambling. His visits at old Vertua's grew more and more frequent; Angela conceived a warmer and warmer liking for the man whose safeguarding angel she had been, until finally she thought she loved him with all her heart; and she promised him her hand, to the great joy of old Vertua, who at last felt that the settlement respecting the property he had lost to the Chevalier could now be concluded. "One day Angela, Chevalier Menars' happy betrothed, sat at her window wrapped up in varied thoughts of the delights and happiness of love, such as young girls when betrothed are wont to dwell upon. A regiment of chasseurs passed by to the merry sound of the trumpet, bound for a campaign in Spain. As Angela was regarding with sympathetic interest the poor men who were doomed to death in the wicked war, a young man wheeled his horse quickly to one side and looked up at her, and she sank back in her chair fainting. "Oh! the chasseur who was riding to meet a bloody death was none other than young Duvernet, their neighbor's son, with whom she had grown up, who had run in and out of the house nearly every day, and had only kept away since the Chevalier had begun to visit them. "In the young man's glance, which was charged with re proaches having all the bitterness of death in them, Angela became conscious for the first time, not only that he loved her unspeakably, but also how boundless was the love which she herself felt for him. Hitherto she had not been conscious of it; she had been infatuated, fascinated by the glitter which gathered ever more thickly about the Chevalier. She now understood, and for the first time, the youth's laboring sighs and quiet unpretending homage; and now too she also understood her own embarrassed heart for the first time, knew what had caused the fluttering sensation in her breast when Duvernet had come, and when she had heard his voice. "It is too late! I have lost him!' was the voice that spoke in Angela's soul. She had courage enough to beat down the feelings of wretchedness which threatened to distract her heart; and for that reason—namely, that she possessed the courage she succeeded. "Nevertheless it did not escape the Chevalier's acute perception that something had happened to powerfully affect Angela; but he possessed sufficient delicacy of feeling not to seek for a solution of the mystery, which it was evident she desired to conceal from him. He contented himself with depriving any dangerous rival of his power by expediting the marriage; and he made all arrangements for its celebration with such fine tact, and such a sympathetic appreciation of his fair bride's situation and sentiments, that she saw in them a new proof of the good and amiable qualities of her husband. "The Chevalier's behavior towards Angela showed him attentive to her slightest wish, and exhibited that sincere esteem which springs from the purest affection; hence her memory of Duvernet soon vanished entirely from her mind. The first cloud that dimmed the bright heaven of her happiness was the illness and death of old Vertua. "Since the night when he had lost all his fortune at the Chevalier's bank he had never touched a card, but during the last moments of his life play seemed to have taken complete possession of his soul. Whilst the priest who had come to administer to him the consolation of the Church ere he died was speaking to him of heavenly things, he lay with his eyes closed, murmuring between his teeth, 'lost, won,' whilst his trembling half-dead hands went through the motions of dealing through a taille, of drawing the cards. Both Angela and the Chevalier bent over him and spoke to him in the tenderest |