"One of your friends believes it his duty to inform you that M. Sirvin is the favored lover of Mme. Frager. He was her lover before she married you. If you still doubt, ask her to show you the contents of the oaken desk, in her bed-room." Mme. Descoutures quietly folded her note, put it in an envelope, wrote the address, and calling a servant, gave it to him to mail. M. Descoutures having given no orders to the contrary, the servant obeyed, and Corinne, from the window, watched him put it into the letter-box on the corner. So it was launched. It was taken from the letter-box to the post-office, where it seemed lost among the thousands of other letters, circulars and newspapers. One of the employés picked it up, little dreaming that he held in his hand the fate of a whole family; he tossed it one side, on a table already covered with hundreds of letters. The Greeks of old wrote of Fate. The oracles of ancient Greece are replaced to-day by the honest, sturdy letter-carriers in their grey and black uniform. It was nine o'clock in the evening. Odette was visiting her friend at St. Cloud; Claude and Grenoble had been absent several days on their sketching tour; Mme. Sirvin had retired early; so Paul was writing alone in his study. His book was progressing finely and would soon be ready for the publisher. Happiness is such a help to labor. He finally threw aside his pen, gayly, conscious that he had written well, and glad to have accomplished so much. He looked around for the evening paper and saw the letter lying on the table, that the servant had brought up with the paper. He noticed that the handwriting was unknown to him, and, carelessly thinking of some thing else, he opened the envelope. He read the note in one glance, without moving, or uttering a sound; then, thinking he had misunderstood it, read it again. He crushed the paper in his hand and tossed it away, saying, "Poor Odette! That such a scoundrel should dare to even take her name on his lips!" Not a moment, not an instant of suspicion. His only thought was of tender sympathy with his wife and anger at her enemy.