All these thoughts weighed down the heart of that young girl, for now she felt more lonely than ever. She was crying bitterly in her solitude when Monsieur Jacques came in. The man was greatly changed, both in person and manner, since she first saw him. He had gradually thrown off the rude dress and seeming of a plebeian, and assumed the garments and habits of a gentleman of the second class. His hair no longer concealed a noble forehead under its tangled masses; his hands were cleansed from the dust of the work-shop; his features, having thrown off their heavy expression, were grand rather than harsh. Marguerite did not know that she herself had won this man out of his extreme radicalism, and lured him back to his old nature, but it produced a kind and winning impression on her, which deepened the gratitude already in her heart, and would have made love a possibility but for the face she had seen that day in the streets of Paris, when her first flowers were offered for sale. “Why is it that you weep?” he inquired, seating himself by the girl, and taking her hand tenderly in his, as if it had been a lost bird he feared to frighten. “You ask me this, as if I had not double cause for tears,” she said, lifting her eyes to his face with a look of pathetic desolation. “My poor father is dead, I can no longer have a hope for him; my mother is silent, stern, self-absorbed—she leaves me alone. Still you ask me not to weep.” “Marguerite!” She looked up quickly; then her eyelids drooped, and the slow color came to her cheeks. “You were about to say something, monsieur,” she said, very softly. “Is there nothing else that makes you unhappy? Has repentance for the words you spoke the other day nothing to do with it? Is it that you think it a promise, and so weep?” “I think it a promise, but do not weep for that,” she answered, lifting her mournful eyes to his face. “But, oh, monsieur! it will never be—my poor father is dead.” Monsieur Jacques dropped her hand. Was it the certainty of her father’s death that had made Marguerite so willing to give that promise? “Marguerite!” It was the second time he had called her by that name, in a voice so sweet and low that it thrilled her to the heart. She attempted to answer, but could not. “Marguerite, I love you! How much no human being can ever know, and I dare not attempt to tell you, lest you think me mad; but I do love you, and hope to win some little return. You did promise to _love_ the man who brought your father alive from the Bastille. Or was that one of my wild dreams?” “It was a promise,” said Marguerite, timidly. “And if I give freedom to your father?” The color left the face on which his pleading eyes were fastened. It seemed to him that a look of affright broke into her eyes; but after a moment she held out her hand. “It was a promise,” she said, simply.