liked not her daughter’s lover.  Of more mature perception, of sharper skill in reading character than her child, she conceived a deep distrust of the airy smile and studied gallantry of Victor Colonne.  She took counsel with matrons old and circumspect as herself; made herself acquainted with Victor’s history; watched his looks, listened to his words narrowly and scrutinisingly; and, day by day, felt more and more strongly that she liked him not—­that there was mischief in his restless eye and soft musical voice.  She communicated her fears to Julia, told her the history of her suitor, and bade her be on her guard.  Julia was startled and distressed.  These suspicions checked the brightness and little glory of her life, and settled wanly and hazily on her soul, like damp breath on a mirror.  But they served as points of departure for daily thoughts.  Looks and words were watched, and weighed, and pondered over with wistful studiousness; and while Victor believed his conquest to be achieved, his increasing assurance and gradual abandonment of disguise were alienating him from the object of his pursuit.  Julia had accompanied him on different occasions to the chateau; been presented to his father; and had been seen, admired, and kindly spoken to by the Comtesse Meurien and her daughters.  Victor had lost no opportunity of strengthening his suit by stimulating her ambition and pride; but it was without avail.  Though pleased for a time, she soon discovered that he was cold, heartless, and even dissolute.  The intimacy betwixt them was fast relapsing into indifference, and, on her side, into dislike, when a certain denouement of Master Victor’s notorious love-makings, accompanied by disgraceful circumstances, determined her to put an end to it, once and for all.

‘So you are determined?’ exclaimed he with ill-restrained anger, as she repeated her resolve to him for the fourth or fifth time.

‘Yes:  I will have nothing more to say to you,’ replied she firmly.

‘Then my father and his reverence the cure may lose all hopes of me!’ returned he bitterly.  ’I have done much ill—­I own it:  I have won no one’s esteem:  I have been idle, irregular, profligate.  But wherefore?  Because I have had no one to care for me.  Since my mother died, I have been left to myself, with no kind hand to guide me, no kind tongue to warn me:  what wonder that youth should go astray?’

‘No one to care for you!’ exclaimed Julia, not without a tinge of sarcasm.  ’Do not your father and monsieur the cure do their utmost for you?’

‘The one reproves, and the other prays for me,’ said Victor, with a derisive smile; then turning to Julia, with a face in which penitence, respect, and affection were well simulated, he exclaimed:  ’but thou, dear Julia, art the sovereign of my soul! in whose hand my fate is placed.  It is for you to shape my destiny:  will you award me love or perdition?  At your bidding, no honourable deed shall be too high to mark my obedience.’