be within another day's work of completion. At such a moment as this
all feeling of vanity is out of the question. I was certainly very beautiful.
A neater, a more tasteful, a finer, or a more exquisitely laced
handkerchief, did not exist within the walls of Paris. In all that she
figured to herself, as related to my appearance, the end justified her
brightest expectations; but, as that end drew near, she felt how
insufficient were human results to meet the desires of human hopes.
Now that her painful and exhausting toil was nearly over, she did not
experience the happiness she had anticipated. The fault was not in me;
but in herself. Hope had exhausted her spirit, and as if merely to teach
the vanity of the wishes of men, a near approach to the object that had
seemed so desirable in the distance, had stripped off the mask and left
the real countenance exposed. There was nothing unusual in this; it was
merely following out a known law of nature.



CHAPTER VII.

The morning of the 14th June arrived. Paris is then at its loveliest
season. The gardens in particular are worthy of the capital of Europe,
and they are open to all who can manage to make a decent appearance.
Adrienne's hotel had a little garden in the rear, and she sat at her
window endeavoring to breathe the balmy odors that arose from it.
Enter it she could not. It was the property, or devoted to the uses, of
the occupant of the rez de chaussee. Still she might look at it as often as
she dared to raise her eyes from her needle. The poor girl was not what
she had been two months before. The handkerchief wanted but a few
hours of being finished, it is true, but the pale cheeks, the hollow eyes
and the anxious look, proved at what a sacrifice of health and physical