second service at the Temple, her preference was not discouraged.  Bessie attended the Protestant ordinances at stated seasons, and went to vespers and benediction besides.  The cure approved of her ingenuous devotion.  Once upon a time there had been Fairfaxes faithful children of the Church:  this young lady was an off-set of that house, its heiress and hope in this generation; it would be a holy deed to bring her, the mother perhaps of a new line, within its sacred pale.

Madame Fournier heard his communication with alarm.  Already, by her ex-teacher Mrs. Wiley, this young Musgrave had been spoken against with voice of warning.  Madame returned to Caen with her worthy pastor.  The enterprising lover was just flown.  Bessie had a sunshine face.  Mademoiselle Adelaide wept that night because of the reproaches madame made her, and the following morning Bessie was invited to resume her lessons, and was mulcted of every holiday indulgence.  Janey Fricker suffered with her, and for nearly a week they were all en penitence.  Then Miss Foster came; madame vanished without leave-taking, as if liable to reappear at any instant, and lessons lapsed back into leisure.  Bessie felt that she had been an innocent scapegrace, and Harry very venturesome; but she had so much enjoyed her “treat,” and felt so much the happier for it, that, all madame’s grave displeasure notwithstanding, she never was properly sorry.

Harry Musgrave returned to England as jubilant as he left Bessie.  The trip, winter though it was, exhilarated him.  But it behooved him to be serious when Mr. Carnegie was angry, and Mrs. Carnegie declared that she did not know how to forgive him.  If his escapade were made known to Mr. Fairfax, the upshot might be a refusal to let Bessie revisit them at Beechhurst throughout the whole continuance of her school-days.  And that was what came of it.  Of course his escapade was communicated to Mr. Fairfax, and Madame Fournier received a letter from Abbotsmead with the intimation that the youth who had presented himself in the Rue St. Jean as a cousin of Miss Fairfax was nothing akin to her, and that if she could not be secured from his presumptuous intrusions there, she must be removed from madame’s custody.  They had associated together as children, but it was desirable to stay the progress of their unequal friendship as they grew up; for the youth, though well conducted and clever, was of mean origin and poor condition; so Mr. Fairfax was credibly informed.  And he trusted that Madame Fournier would see the necessity of a decisive separation between them.

Madame did see the necessity.  With Mr. Fairfax’s letter came to her hand another, a letter from the “youth” himself, but addressed to his dear Bessie.  That it should ever reach her was improbable.  There was the strictest quarantine for letters in the Rue St. Jean.  Even letters to and from parents passed through madame’s private office.  She opened and read Harry Musgrave’s