“I am most sorry to have disarranged you,” said the policeman, satisfied with the answer; “but we shall have him yet.” And he retired. The last footsteps died away, the last door of the apartments closed behind the officers, and Eugenie and her servant stood alone gazing on each other. “You may retire,” said she at last; and taking her purse from the table, she placed it in his hands. The man took it, with a significant look. “Madame may depend on my discretion.” Eugenie was alone again. Those words rang in her ear,--Eugenie de Merville dependent on the discretion of her lackey! She sunk into her chair, and, her excitement succeeded by exhaustion, leaned her face on her hands, and burst into tears. She was aroused by a low voice; she looked up, and the young man was kneeling at her feet. “Go--go!” she said: “I have done for you all I can.” “You heard--you heard--my own hireling, too! At the hazard of my own good name you are saved. Go!” “Of your good name!”--for Eugenie forgot that it was looks, not words, that had so wrung her pride--“Your good name,” he repeated: and glancing round the room--the toilette, the curtain, the recess he had quitted--all that bespoke that chastest sanctuary of a chaste woman, which for a stranger to enter is, as it were, to profane--her meaning broke on him. “Your good name--your hireling! No, madame,--no!” And as he spoke, he rose to his feet. “Not for me, that sacrifice! Your humanity shall not cost you so dear. Ho, there! I am the man you seek.” And he strode to the door. Eugenie was penetrated with the answer. She sprung to him--she grasped his garments. “Hush! hush!--for mercy’s sake! What would you do? Think you I could ever be happy again, if the confidence you placed in me were betrayed? Be calm--be still. I knew not what I said. It will be easy to undeceive the man--later--when you are saved. And you are innocent,--are you not?” “Oh, madame,” said Morton, “from my soul I say it, I am innocent--not of poverty--wretchedness--error--shame; I am innocent of crime. May Heaven bless you!” And as he reverently kissed the hand laid on his arm, there was something in his voice so touching, in his manner something so above his fortunes, that Eugenie was lost in her feelings of compassion, surprise, and something, it might be, of admiration in her wonder. “And, oh!” he said, passionately, gazing on her with his dark, brilliant eyes, liquid with emotion, “you have made my life sweet in saving it. You--you--of whom, ever since the first time, almost the sole time, I beheld you--I have so often mused and dreamed. Henceforth, whatever befall me, there will be some recollections that will--that--” He stopped short, for his heart was too full for words; and the silence said more to Eugenie than if all the eloquence of Rousseau had glowed upon his tongue. “And who, and what are you?” she asked, after a pause. “An exile--an orphan--an outcast! I have no name! Farewell!”