his name, to marry him. Raymond started when the subject was broached, but, with the matter-of-fact coolness of a Frenchman in such things, he quickly recovered his composure, and observed blandly to the aged countess: “You are right, my aunt. It had not occurred to me, I confess; but now that you mention it, I see it would be desirable.” And having so far arranged his marriage, Raymond, satisfied with his own consent, relapsed into his books, and begged that he might hear no more about it until his grand-aunt had found him a wife. The family of the De Xaintriacs lived near him, and happened just at this moment to have a daughter to marry; so the old countess ordered out the lumbering family coach that had taken her great-grandmother to the _fêtes_ given for Marie de Medicis on her marriage, and rumbled over the roads to the Château de Xaintriac. This ancestral hall was about on a par with its neighbor, De la Bourbonais, as regarded external preservation, but the similarity between the two houses ended here. The De Xaintriacs’ origin was lost in the pre-historic ages before the Deluge, the earliest record of its existence being a curious iron casket preserved in the archives, in which, it was said, the family papers had been rescued from the Flood by one of Noe’s daughters-in-law, “herself a demoiselle de Xaintriac”--so ran the legend. The papers had been destroyed in a fire many centuries before the Christian era, but happily the casket had been saved. It was to a daughter of this illustrious house that the Comtesse de la Bourbonais offered her grand-nephew in marriage. Armengarde de Xaintriac was twenty-five years of age, and shadowed forth in character and person the finest characteristics of her mystic genealogy. In addition to the antediluvian casket, she brought the husband, who was exactly double her age, a dower of beauty and sweetness that surpassed even the lofty pride that was her birthright. For four years they were as happy as two sojourners in this valley of tears could well be. Then the young wife began to droop, perishing away slowly before her husband’s eyes. “Take her to the Nile for a year; there is just a chance that that may save her,” said the doctors. Armengarde did not hear the cruel verdict; and when Raymond came back one day after a short absence, and announced that he had come in unexpectedly to a sum of money, and proposed their spending the winter in Egypt, she clapped her hands, and made ready for the journey. Raymond watched her delight like one transfigured, while she, suspecting nothing, took his happiness as a certain pledge of restored health, and went singing about the house, as if the promise were already fulfilled. The whole place revived in a new atmosphere of hope and security; the low ceilings, festooned with the cobwebs of a generation, grew alight with cheerfulness, and the sunbeams streamed more freely through the dingy panes of the deep windows. It was