knitting needles in providing for his winter comfort. "Mais revenons à nos moutons." Our present business is with the young lover and his fair mistress, and the still younger Madelaine. Time will overtake them soon enough. We need not anticipate his work. The old inexorable brought to a conclusion Walter's leave of absence, just as certain discoveries to which we have alluded were beginning to break upon him; just as la belle Adrienne began to weary of playing at _parfait amour_, enacting the adorable to her lover, and the _aimable_ to her cousin _in his presence_; just as Monsieur and Madame, her weak but worthy parents, were secretly praying for their future son-in-law's departure, in the forlorn hope (as they had stipulated that even _les fiançailles_ should not take place for a twelve-month to come) that some unexpected page might yet turn over in the chapter of accidents, whereon might be written the name of Jules Marquis d'Arval, instead of that of the landless, untitled Walter Barnard, for the husband of their beautiful heiress. Just at this critical juncture arrived the day of separation--of separation for a year certain! Will it be doubted that with the parting hour, rushed back upon Walter's heart a flood of tenderness, even more impassioned than that with which it had first pledged itself to the beautiful Adrienne? The enthusiasm of his nature, acting as a stimulus to her apathetic temperament, communicated to her farewell so much of the appearance of genuine feeling, that the young soldier returned to his country, and to his military duties, imbued with the blissful assurance that, whatever unworthy doubts had been suggested occasionally by fallacious appearances, the heart of his fair betrothed was as faultless as her person, and exclusively devoted to himself. So wholly had the "sweet sorrow" of that farewell absorbed his every faculty, that it was not till he was miles from St Hilaire on his way to the coast, that Walter remembered la petite Madelaine; remembered that he had bid HER no farewell; that she had slipt away to her own home the last evening of his stay at St Hilaire, unobserved by all but an old _bonne_, who was commissioned to say Mademoiselle Madelaine had a headache, and that she had not reappeared the next morning, the morning of his departure. "Dear little Madelaine! how could I forget her?" was the next thought to that which had recalled her. "But she shall live with us when we are married." So having laid the flattering unction to his conscience, by that satisfactory arrangement for her future comfort, he "whistled her image down the wind" again, and betook himself with redoubled ardour to the contemplation of Adrienne.