The most timid woman will find energy and resolution for all, when the happiness of one she loves is at stake. In the first instance, the two women employed a man to go to the office for them; but this did not satisfy Minnie when he proclaimed his want of success. "How can we be quite certain he went, or searched as we should have done?" asked she. "I will go myself." "You cannot do so alone!" cried Mary, "and I am unable to leave my shop." "Why not? Oh, but I can! Miles will be all day to-morrow at the Louvre; I will not accompany him, and putting on a close bonnet and veil, lest I should meet any one, take a _fiacre_ and go." Mary tried to dissuade her for some short time, and then she relinquished the task herself, convinced that it would be the most secure and satisfactory thing to do. Minnie had no one to advise or assist her, and on Mary she almost looked as upon a sister, from the circumstances of her childhood passed with Miles and his mother; then again, they were mutually interested in this affair, and Mary was so humble and contrite in manner, it would have been impossible for the other not to love her. All this intimacy, however, did not pass without censure on Miles's part, not that he doubted Mary then; but he deemed, in worldly wisdom, that where Minnie's name had been in question, however innocent she had proved, too much caution could not be observed; then, too, the one dark spot in his happiness ever arose before him--her imprudence in flying with himself, which would ever leave one place in her fame open to animadversion; but he spoke to the least worldly woman ever created, and then at this moment she had so strong a motive in seeking Mary, that all his arguments terminated in a tacit consent on his part, however unwillingly given, when Minnie's arms encircled his neck, and her smiling cheek pressed itself like a child's to his, as she coaxed him into good temper; then, too, there was a fonder hope in his heart than any he had ever yet known, whatever he had once said of being even jealous of his own child.