At these words, while the shopkeeper and Miss Dimpleton were debating the prices of different articles, Rudolph looked more attentively at the piece of furniture which Mother Bouvard had pointed out. It was one of those old secretaries of rosewood, in shape nearly triangular, shut in by a panel in front, which, thrown back, and supported by two long brass hinges, could be used as a writing-desk. In the middle of the panel, inlaid with different-colored wood, Rudolph noticed a cipher in ebony, an M. and R. interlaced, and surmounted by the coronet of a count. He imagined its last possessor to belong to an elevated class of society. His curiosity increased; he examined the secretary with renewed attention; he opened mechanically the drawers, one after the other, when, finding some difficulty in opening the last, and seeking the cause, he discovered and drew out carefully a sheet of paper, partly entangled between the drawer and the bottom of the secretary. While Miss Dimpleton was finishing her purchases with Mother Bouvard, Rudolph narrowly scrutinized the paper; from the many erasures it was easily to be seen that it was an unfinished draught of a letter. Rudolph, with difficulty, read as follows: "Sir,--Be assured that misfortunes the most frightful could alone compel me to address you. It is not from ill-placed pride I feel these scruples, but the absolute want of any claim to the service I venture to ask of you. The sight of my daughter, reduced, like myself, to the most painful privation, urges me to the task. A few words will explain the cause of the misfortunes which overwhelm me. After the death of my husband, there remained to me a fortune of three hundred thousand francs, placed by my brother with M. Jacques Ferrand, notary. I received at Angers, where I had retired with my daughter, the interest of this sum in remittances from my brother. You remember, sir, the frightful event that put an end to his existence: ruined, as it appeared, by secret and unfortunate speculations, he destroyed himself eight months since. Before this melancholy event, I received from him a few lines, written in despair, in which he said, when I read them he should have ceased to exist; he finished by informing me that he possessed no document relative to the sum placed in my name with M. Jacques Ferrand, as that individual never gave a receipt, but was honor and goodness itself, and it would only be necessary for me to call on him for the affairs to be satisfactorily arranged. As soon as I could possibly turn my attention to anything but the fearful death of my brother, I came to Paris, where I knew no one but yourself, sir, and that indirectly, by business you had had with my husband. I told you that the sum placed with M. Jacques Ferrand comprised the whole of my fortune, and that my brother sent me, every six months, the interest derived from that sum. More than a year having passed since