"The coral!" repeated she, impatiently, as she took the jewel and placed it on her brow. "Now fasten it, and leave me," she added, to her women. As they were retiring, she said, "Let them show M. Ferrand into the little blue saloon; and," she continued, with an expression of ill-concealed pride, "as soon as his Serene Highness the Grand Duke of Gerolstein arrives, he must be ushered in here. At length," said Sarah, throwing herself back in her chair as soon as she was alone with her brother, "at length I touch this crown--the dream of my life! The prediction is about to be accomplished!" "Sarah, calm your emotion," said her brother, earnestly. "Yesterday they still despaired of your life; disappointment now might cause a relapse." "You are right, Tom. The fall would be dreadful, for my hopes have never been nearer being realized than now! I am certain that what has prevented me from sinking under my sufferings has been my constant hope to profit by the important revelation which this woman made me at the moment when she stabbed me." "Even during your delirium you constantly referred to this idea." "Because this idea alone sustained my flickering life. What a hope! Sovereign princess! almost a queen," she added, with rapture. "Once more, Sarah; no mad dreams; the awakening will be terrible!" "Mad dreams? How! when Rudolph shall know that this young girl, now a prisoner at Saint Lazare, is our child, do you think that---" Seyton interrupted his sister. "I believe," he replied, with bitterness, "that princes place reasons of state and political proprieties before natural ties." "Do you count so little on my address?" "The prince is not the same fond and enamored youth whom you seduced in days gone by." "Do you know why I have wished to ornament my hair with this band of coral? and why I have put on this white robe? It is because, the first time Rudolph saw me at the court of Gerolstein, I was dressed in white, and I wore the same band of coral in my hair." "How?" said Thomas Seyton, looking at his sister with surprise: "you wish to evoke these memories; do you not, on the contrary, dread their influence?" "I know Rudolph better than you. Doubtless, my features, now changed by age and sufferings, are no longer those of the young girl of sixteen he so wildly loved--whom he has alone loved--for I was his first love. And this love, unique in the life of man, leaves always in his heart ineffaceable traces. Believe me, brother, the sight of this ornament will awaken in Rudolph, not only the memories of his love, but also those of his youth; and to men the recollection of their first emotions is always sweet and precious."