“Malgat left with tottering steps, despair in his heart, and resolved to kill himself.  When he returned home, he actually went to look among his curiosities for an old flint-lock pistol, and began to load it.

“Ah! why did he not kill himself then?  He would have carried his deceptive illusions and his unstained honor with him to the grave.

“He was just about to make his will when they brought him a letter from Sarah.  She wrote thus:—­

“’When a girl like myself loves, she loves for life, and she is his whom she loves, or she is nobody’s.  If your love is true, if dangers and difficulties terrify you no more than they terrify me, knock to-morrow night, at ten o’clock, at the gate of the court.  I will open.’

“Mad with joy and hope, Malgat went to the fatal meeting.  Do you know what happened?  Sarah fell around his neck, and said,—­

“‘I love you.  Let us run away.’

“Ah! if he had taken her at her word, and answered her, offering her his arm,—­

“‘Yes, let us flee,’ the plot might have been defeated, and he might have been saved; for she would certainly not have gone with him.

“But with that clear perception which was a perfect marvel in her, and looked like the gift of second sight, she had taken the measure of the cashier, and exposed herself to the danger, well-knowing that he would shrink from doing what she asked.

“He did shrink, the idiot! he was afraid.  He said to himself that it would be a mean thing to abuse the attachment of this pure and trustful girl, to separate her from her family, and to ruin her forever.

“He did have this wonderful power of self-denial to dissuade her from taking such a step, and to induce her to be patient, giving time an opportunity of coming to their assistance, while he would do all he could to overcome the obstacles in the way.

“For hours after he had left Sarah Brandon, Malgat had not recovered from the excitement; and he would have thought the whole a dream, but for the penetrating perfume which his clothes still retained where she had rested her beautiful head.  But, when he at last began to examine his position, he came to the conclusion that he had indulged in childish illusions, and that he could never hope to satisfy the demands made by M. Elgin and Mrs. Brian.  There was but one way, a single way, by which he could ever hope to obtain possession of this woman whom he worshipped; and that was the one she had herself proposed,—­an abduction.  To determine upon such a step, however, was for Malgat to end his peaceful life forever, to lose his place, to abandon the past, and to venture upon an unknown future.  But how could he reason at a moment when his whole mind was filled with thoughts of the most amazing happiness that ever was enjoyed by mortal being?