The electric chord in Isaura’s heart was touched. Who cannot conceive what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of established fame? “Nay, this cannot be worth your reading,” said Isaura, falteringly; “I have never written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to me. I know not,” she added, with a sweet low laugh, “why I began, nor how I should end it.” “So much the better,” said Savarin; and he took the manuscript, withdrew to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading silently and quickly, but now and then with a brief pause of reflection. Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and began talking with her earnestly,--earnestly, for it was about himself and his aspiring hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, more woman-like than author-like, ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her manuscript,--Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in the young fellow-author. Seeking to do so she succeeded genuinely, for ready sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature. “Oh,” said Rameau, “I am at the turning-point of my life. Ever since boyhood I have been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier on the morning he was led to the scaffold ‘And yet there was something here,’ striking his forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong in the chase of a name; I, underrated, uncomprehended, indebted even for a hearing to the patronage of an amiable trifler like Savarin, ranked by petty rivals in a grade below themselves,--I now see before me, suddenly, abruptly presented, the expanding gates into fame and fortune. Assist me, you!” “But how?” said Isaura, already forgetting her manuscript; and certainly Rameau did not refer to that. “How!” echoed Rameau; “how! But do you not see--or at least, do you not conjecture--this journal of which Savarin speaks contains my present and my future? Present independence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay,--and who shall say? renown beyond that of the mere writer. Behind the gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice unperceived arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given to the men who help obscurely to build it,--to men like me.” Here, drawing her hand into his own, fixing on her the most imploring gaze of his dark persuasive eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his adjuration, he added: “Plead for me with your whole mind and heart; use your uttermost influence with the illustrious writer whose pen can assure the fates of my journal.” Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, who announced unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham Vane. CHAPTER X.