"Oh!" she burst forth in English, "I am so happy to meet some one who speaks my own tongue, it has been a stranger to me so long a time; let us converse always in it: the sound has been lost to me. I have been teaching my child to speak his first word in my native tongue." "What is your boy's name?" he asked, deeply interested in this fair young mother. She hesitated a moment. In christening him he had been named "William," as second name, after her father, and by this she generally now called him to strangers; his father's might lead somehow to detection, for frequently the _concièrge_ took him in her arms for a walk, when she was too busy to leave home, and always returned with an account of the many persons who stopped to inquire the boy's name. As William, or Guillaume Deval, who might recognize the parents? Almost an impulse induced her to give him Miles's name when this other inquired; but, checking herself, she said "William." "Has he no father?" asked the old man, caressing the boy, who now sat on his mother's knee; and he looked searchingly at her. But any thought of error fled when you gazed in Minnie's pure face: sin never could look thus. "We are parted," she said sadly. "Some day, perhaps, monsieur, I may tell you all, and ask your advice; for indeed you seem as an old friend, and father to me. I hope we shall often meet." And they did; and it seemed as if a blessing followed her good deed, for work came pouring in, and she found constant employment, as we have seen, even from the first dressmakers in Paris--thus she knew of Lady Lysson's party to the _bal de l'opera_; and her fingers made the domino in which Lady Dora leaned on Tremenhere and listened to his love--so strange a thing is fate! An impulse, impossible to resist, impelled her to visit that scene, whose gaiety harmonized so little with her feelings. She had the two dominoes to make; and in the black one we have seen how much she intrigued Tremenhere--the other she had left with the woman keeping the cloaks, and her foresight served her purpose well, of knowing all. Who may tell the agony of this woman, leaning once again on his arm, and listening to those accents which thrilled her inmost soul--words too of interest fell from his lips, and her bursting heart said, "Throw off your mask, and he will fly you in horror or hate;" but nothing could ever equal in agony that moment when, leaning against the pillar in her second dress, she heard the greater portion of his conversation with Lady Dora; and, worse than all, the promise of the morrow! How could she dive into his heart, and read its sorrow, remorse, and revenge, prompting it to the part he was playing with her cousin? She only saw facts--heard words. She saw him friendly and kind with Lord Randolph; and in his face, whose every look she knew full well, she read confidence and friendship towards that man; then all the hate was her own--it was not mere jealousy, but personal dislike, or he could not so