“‘Ah, Mademoiselle!’ returned I, ‘you know not to whom you address the term gratitude.’ ‘To one who has conferred on me a great pleasure,’ said she.’ ‘To one who has caused you a serious pain--to the killer of Robin.’ “‘You, sir?--I cannot credit it--why should you do so? you are not so cruel.’ “‘No, but I am so unfortunate. It was in opening his collar, which I have also brought to you, that your ring fell on the ground--you promised a great recompence to him who should find it. I dare to solicit that recompence; grant me my pardon for Robin’s death.’ “‘And I, sir, I thank you for it,’ exclaimed the mother. ‘I never could endure that animal; it took up Amelia’s entire time, and wearied me out of all patience with its bleating. If you had not killed it, Heaven knows where it might have carried my diamond. But how did it get entangled in the collar? Amelia, pray explain all this.’ “Amelia’s heart was agitated; she was as much grieved that it was I who had killed Robin, as that he was dead.--‘Poor Robin,’ said she, drying a tear, ‘he was rather too fond of running out; before leaving home, I had put on his collar that he might not be lost--he had always been brought back to me. The ring must have slipped under his collar. I hastily drew on my glove, and never missed it till I was at supper. “‘What good luck it was that he went straight to this gentleman’s,’ observed the mother. “‘Yes--for you,’ said Amelia; ‘he was cruelly received--was it such a crime, sir, to enter your door?’ “‘It was night,’ I replied; ‘I could not distinguish the collar, and I learned, when too late, that the animal belonged to you.’ “‘Thank Heaven, then, you did not know it!’ cried the mother, or where would have been my ring?’ “‘It is necessary at least,’ said Amelia, with emotion, ‘that I should know how my favourite could have so cruelly chagrined you.’ “‘O Mademoiselle, he had devoured my hope, my happiness, a superb rose-tree about to blow, that I had been long watching, and intended to present to--to--a person on New-Year’s-Day.’ Amelia smiled, blushed, extended her lovely hand towards me, and murmured,--‘All is pardoned.’ ‘If it had eaten up a rose-tree about to blow,’ cried Madame de Belmont, ‘it deserved a thousand deaths. I would give twenty sheep for a rose-tree in blow.’ ‘And I am much mistaken,’ said Amelia, with the sweetest _naïveté_, ‘if this very rose-tree was not intended for you.’ ‘For me! you have lost your senses child; I have not the honour of knowing the gentleman.’ ‘But he knows your fondness for roses; I mentioned it one day before him, the only time I ever met him, at Madame de S.’s. Is it not true, sir, that my unfortunate favourite had eaten up my mother’s rose-tree?’ I acknowledged it, and I related the course of education of my fifty rose-trees.