no hostile intention, and a solemn asseveration that he was a man of the nicest and the most undoubted honour.

This satisfied the good peruquier: he said frankly that she was. This avowal only increased Mr. Rubasore's desire to see the person who had played so adventurous a part; and this "man of the nicest and most undoubted honour" then said that he was anxious to relieve the young female and would be ready to feel her pulse and to pre-. scribe for her, thus deceptively implying that he was a physician.

M. Florentin, for that was the name of the emigré, was grateful. He led the way up a narrow and dark staircase, and, opening the door of the room on the first floor, introduced the soi-disant physician at once into the presence of light and loveliness-the latter, alas! how faded. Mr. Rubasore was, in some measure, inured to the effects of beauty. He had gazed for hours, and fed his soul with the charms of his ward; he had watched every grace in her deportment, chased every dimple and smile across her radiant countenance, and sometimes ventured tremblingly to revel in the dark depths of poetry-surcharged eyes. But there now stood before him a beauty of a totally different description-a beauty to which the heart at once warmed, and for which it ached-a beauty that carried the mind, in spite of itself, away from the joys of earth, and made the beholder think of the resurrection of spirits, and a state of being where that worm, disease, shall find no place.

Rosalie was tall, and, when standing, seemed to stoop. This bend was not natural to her: but partly induced by her continual drooping over her tambour frame, partly from illness, but, more than all this, from that crushing feeling of sinking at the heart, when hope has departed, which seems to attract us to the earth, in order that we may repose beneath it and remember our miseries no

more.

Rosalie's face was of a paleness that was distressing to behold, her lips were bloodless, and fearful hollows, those graves of hope, were remarkable upon her temples: they seemed to have been dug there by a never-ceasing, cankering anxiety. Her face, however, notwithstanding this deadly paleness, was by no means attenuated; it was of the most perfect oval shape, and the outline well filled in. Her eyes were hazel, large, and with an expression

of the profoundest melancholy. The face would have made a noble monument of still, unchanging grief, were it not for a continual spasmodic play over the upper lip, that indicated wo unutterable. There, in that small space, was the battle-field between the heroism of silently though ceaselessly suffering and the impulse to the sob of anguish and the scream of despair.

66

Rosalie, my child!" said the father, "Here is the kind physician come to do you good."

He bowed, and left the room.

CHAPTER VII.

"Ye powers, who act the needful part,
Whipping sins ye discover;

Starve, starve the love that spoils the heart,
But do not starve the lover."

OLD SONG.

MR. RUBASORE was embarrassed. He looked into his patient's countenance, and his heart smote him: however, he was determined to play the part through that he had assumed, for already had his wish to gain the name and the history of the supposed spy a little subsided. Just then he felt that he dare not impertinently question her.

At length they were seated, side by side; and Mr. Rubasore, after some hesitation, commenced in the usual manner, by making the most common-place remarks that it can be supposed that the human mind can entertain, short of mere foolishness.

After they found that they were both of the same opinion-that, if it did not rain, or become disagreeably hot or cold, the day would turn out fine-and a good deal more conversation of the same weight and urgency, Mr. Rubasore hemmed very professionally, and, at length, possessed himself of her wrist.

To all his inquiries she returned short answers, but in the sweetest tone that he thought he ever had heard. When

her pale lips unclosed, he became aware that her silence concealed a set of the most splendid teeth-teeth that seemed only made for the purpose of being the ivory portals for smiles-yet smile there was none. Her lips unclosed and revealed the inner beauty, but joy had deserted her choicest residence.

Mr. Rubasore, being a generally well-informed man, did not play the part that he had assumed, ill. The symptoms, however, puzzled him exceedingly. There was evidently no fever; the pulse was regular, though slow and languid. She had no cough, no difficulty of breathing, no tightness across the chest. Her appetite was neither bad nor good; she did not care for her food, yet she ate it in sufficient quantities, when placed before her-at least, she said so.

Of what she most complained, was the horror of her dreams. She could find no rest for them; she trembled to sleep, and scarcely dared close her eyes. She begged Mr. Rubasore not to prescribe opium for her in any shape, for it only increased her sufferings, and drove her to the very verge of madness.

When she had yielded him all this information in the fewest words possible, and which cost him many to extract, he came, of course, to the conclusion that hers was the old story, "a mind diseased:" and then he felt himself convinced that the secret with which he wished to become acquainted was of the greater importance. He had other, and far deeper motives also, with which, at present, we have nothing to do, and which, too, he hardly dared avow to himself.

He next questioned her as to her regimen. The answers on this head appalled him. Notwithstanding all her cautiousness, he plainly perceived that both father and daughter were striving who best could endure famine, and who best could cheat the other into the belief that they ate every day as much as they desired. And yet they owed no money, and no shop in the neighbourhood could compete with that of M. Florentin for neatness, and an appearance of comfort. Rosalie was in her dress, not only clean, but bien gentile.

Much has been truly and justly said in praise of the dignified fall of the assassinated Cæsar before Pompey's statue, and of the quiet heroism of the acts of his dying

moments, of his "in his mantle wrapping up himself," so that he might expire with majesty and decorum, and be, even in death, calm, and sustained, and great. But what is all this compared to the exalted endurance of these two unfriended foreigners? The dagger of starvation was making its savage way through their bosoms, yet they cried not out to the passers by, and showed not their wounds to those near them; but enfolding themselves in their mantles of respectability, each had prepared to die uncomplaining before that altar, whose sanctity man nor woman should ever violate-the altar of self-respect.

This was too much, even for the selfish Rubasore. The better part of his nature triumphed. When he fully understood the nature of the case, he rose, and said, "that he should take time to consider of the symptoms, and prescribe the necessary remedies early the next day.'

He asked no more questions of Rosalie, but kindly taking leave, descended into the shop. When there, Mr. Rubasore began to ruminate deeply. He had time. There was a customer under the operation of being shaved. He watched the whole process with a philo sophical attention, and it did much to make him a better man-for the next four hours.

The man was a sturdy and morose-looking coal-heaver; he was in an ill-temper; there he sat, with M. Floren tin's whitest of napkin's under his chin, and in contact with his dirty imbedded black frock. The beard was of the growth of many days, and might be compared to a crop of tenpenny nails, points upwards growing out of a bed of gravel. There was a frothy lather made round the lower part of the visage, that was in magnitude equal to the unkempt black crop above, and in admirable contrast with it. As the razor passed through this mass, the gritty particles of coal and other hard substances might be heard grinding against, and turning the edge of the razor, the man swearing and wincing, and M. Florentin moving about him with all the tender assiduity of a nurse near a sick child. The politeness of the barber was imperturbable; but neither the beard of the coal-heaver, nor his iron stubble, was to be, softened by all the emollient applications that it was in the power of the poor foreigner to apply,