"Madelaine! dear Madelaine!" were the first whispered words by which Walter ventured to make his presence known to her. But low as was the whisper--gentle as were the accents--a thunder-clap could not have produced an effect more electric. Starting from her seat with a half shriek, she would have fallen to the ground from excess of agitation and surprise, but for Walter's supporting arm, and it required a world of soothing and affectionate gentleness to restore her to any degree of self-possession. Her first impulse, on regaining it, was the honourable one of endeavouring to remove from Walter's observation the letter that had been designed for his perusal under circumstances so different; but quietly laying his hand upon the outspread paper, as she turned to snatch it from the table, with the other arm he gently drew her from it to himself, and with a smile in which there was more of tender than bitter feeling, said--"It is too late, Madelaine--I know all--who could have thought you such a little impostor!" Poor little Madelaine! never was mortal maiden so utterly confounded, so bewildered as she, by the detection, and by her own hurried and almost unintelligible attempts to deprecate what, in the simplicity of her heart, she fancied must be the high indignation of Walter at _her_ share of the imposition so long practised on him. Whether it was that, in the course of her agitated pleading, she spied relenting in the eyes to which hers were raised so imploringly, or a _something_ even more encouraging in their expression, or in the pressure of the hands which clasped hers, upraised in the vehemence of supplication, certain it is that she stopped short in the middle of a sentence--with a tear in her eye and a blush on her cheek, and something like a dawning smile on the lip that still quivered with emotion, and that "Le bon Walter" magnanimously illustrated by his conduct the hackneyed maxim, that "Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,"--