“You never told me about it, grandmother,” added Annette. “Why did you not?” “Good reasons had I. So much was there to say that could not be talked about. A great many people had yet in mind Catherine Ring’s words, and so Aaron Burr’s long watch for the child that never came was quietly and pitifully passed over. Yes, people remember; and if they do not remember they _feel_--they _feel_, they know not what. I have watched. One by one, I have seen those that welcomed Aaron Burr home drop away from him. This day a man stops and greets him, to-morrow he passes him by. The unlucky, they only stick to him; because for a familiar they know him. Aaron Burr is a doomed man--haunted by the wraiths of those he has wronged--a doomed man, and nothing that he does shall ever prosper.” She ceased speaking with these words, and after some desultory conversation on the subject, Sappha said, “she must go home.” Then Annette went upstairs with her, and Achille made an effort to continue the subject; but neither madame nor yet Leonard were disposed for discussion; and when Sappha returned to the parlour, cloaked and wrapped in furs, Leonard hastily assumed his street costume and went out with her. Then the conversation, the warmth, and the drowsy light, added to the unusual feeling which the Ring tragedy had evoked, produced an effect upon madame she did not anticipate--she gradually lost consciousness, and finally fell asleep. For a while Achille and Annette spoke in whispers, and Annette tried all her powers to win from her companion the secret madame made so much of. He dallied with it, but kept it inviolate; and she dropped her pretty head with a sense of defeat that the circumstance hardly seemed to warrant. Quiet and speechless she sat, and Achille held her hand and watched the shadow of disappointment obliterate the dimples and smiles, not always as becoming in his eyes as her graver deportment. The glow of the firelight, the stillness thrilled through and through with that old tragedy of love, the look of defeat in Annette’s pretty face, and her whole attitude of submission to it, pleased the young man. He thought her more womanly and exquisite than ever before; and he kissed the hand he held, and said in the softest, sweetest voice: “I cannot tell you madame’s secret, but I will tell you one of my own--Annette, beautiful Annette, I love you.” And Annette behaved with the most amazing propriety. He felt the little hand he held tremble to his words, and he saw on her face the transfiguration of love, though she did not lift it, or answer him in any other way. But this coy reticence was exactly the conduct Achille approved; and in that dim room, where only sleep kept vigil, Achille asked Annette to be his wife, and Annette answered him as he desired. “I shall speak to madame in the morning,” he said; “to-night it will be too much.” “It is too much even for me,” answered Annette; “I never dreamed of being so happy.”