There was so much of seeming pathos in his voice that Fifine could not doubt the implied sincerity of his tone, so she unsealed the secrets of her life, telling him all, except the unhappy cause which forced her father to bring her into such entire seclusion. Many of my readers must have guessed, by now, that he whom the students at the Travellers' Inn called "Bijou," and he who is now making desperate love to Fifine de Maistre, are identical. Just as the "boys" had said, "the Prince" was sure to break the spell, that fettered the life of the beautiful recluse. He had been on his way to her father, to seek his permission for himself and his fellow students to pass through his grounds, when all at once a new experience presented itself and he found himself talking all sorts of nice nonsense, to a "deuced pretty girl." It is needless to dwell on the details of the first meeting between those two. Fifine had thought it wiser to leave her charming escort at the rustic gate, insinuating that he might come at any other time to visit her father, and that there was no necessity to speak of what had transpired in the wood. "But, Mademoiselle," said "Bijou" as he leaned languidly over the gate that stood between them, "are you going to dismiss me like this, as soon as I have discovered the charm of your presence? If your father objects why could you not visit this spot unknown to him; I must see you again, at any cost." He grasped the tiny, white hand that drooped over the gate, and looked her pleadingly in the eyes. Fifine was dreaming. All the wild fanciful illusions with which she had brightened the dark days of her young life, seemed to be realizing themselves in a bright procession before her eyes. Here was that ideal lover with whom she had so often rambled through those solitary grounds in fancy--here he was in reality telling his tale of love into her ready ear. Here was the voice she had heard in her dreams, and there were the deep dark eyes that had haunted her out of the page of Eugène Sue's novel, through the long, long days of her loneliness. Compensation seemed within easy grasp. She looked up, into the face of the man before her, and the die was cast. She recognized there a power from which she could never fly. She shivered slightly as she realised that he was master of her will, in spite of herself almost. He saw his advantage, he knew before this how such an ascendancy profits the owner, and his eyes sparkled anew with a light which to other eyes than Fifine's would not have been wholly attractive. The world is full of such people and their victims. We look upon a face under whose steady gaze we stagger; there are eyes we cannot encounter in a full unflinching look; there are hands whose touch thrills and weakens us, there are voices which sink into our souls, and mesmerize us at their will. Let the circumstances be what they may, we cannot forget the influence that thus haunts our lives.