“And yet my clock,” thought Dumiger; “all the honors I have anticipated, the gratification of my ambition, that greatness I have dreamed of; can I forget all this?”

He was about to reply, when the door opened and Marguerite entered.  The length of time that the conversation lasted had made her impatient; besides, she mistrusted the Count.

He looked annoyed at her appearance, for he imagined that Dumiger was on the point of acceding to his terms.

“Marguerite, I am so rejoiced you have come!” exclaimed Dumiger, as though a sudden light had burst upon him.  “The Lord Count has offered to buy my clock, and to make us rich beyond all expectation; to have us placed high among the first class of the citizens; in fact to enable us at once to secure all that men pass their lifetimes in striving to attain, if I will give up my clock and declare that I failed in its execution.  What do you say, Marguerite?”

“What do I say!” she exclaimed, and as she spoke she drew herself up to her full height, her brow contracted, the color glowed in her cheek.  “And did you hesitate what reply to make?”

“I thought of you, Marguerite.”

“Of me!” she replied.  “Oh, do not think of me; or rather if you do so, think that I would sooner live in the most abject poverty, and suffer any amount of privation, than part with the work, the consummation of which will be the glory of your life.  Part with your clock! no, I would sooner sell this hair which you so prize, part with all those qualities which render me dear to you; nay more, I think I would even be content to sacrifice your love rather than see all the results of your patient industry wasted, your noble ambition sacrificed.  Think of me, dear Dumiger, but think of me only as a part of yourself, as one who would give up every hope and every future to secure your happiness, that is, your fame.”

Dumiger rose from his seat, unmindful in whose presence he stood, he pressed Marguerite in his arms; again the nobility of his mind brightened in his eye and beamed over his countenance.  It was another instance amid the thousand which, unknown to them, were passing around them of a man won to noble thoughts by a woman’s influence, proving that she is the animating power to save him in all his difficulties; that she invokes and renews all those noble thoughts which are concealed in the recesses of his mind.  Hers is the light to dispel the mists which the chill atmosphere of the world hangs around the brightest portions of the mind:  great at all times, greatest of all when, in a moment of difficulty, she is called upon to decide between the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, the generous and the mean, the ingenuous and the sophistical; and Marguerite, in one glance, saw all that Dumiger had failed to discover in the Count’s appearance and manner,—­the dark design, the selfish calculation; her simplicity of mind perceived indications of low, mean purposes, which he failed to discern.  Thus it is ever that the first impressions, and, above all other first impressions, the impressions of innocence and youth, are the truest and most to be depended on.