.

A DECLARATION OF LOVE,--SET TO MUSIC.
At this moment Modeste, happy as she was in the return of her father, was, nevertheless, pacing her room disconsolate as Perrette on seeing her eggs broken.

She had hoped her father would bring back a much larger fortune than Dumay had mentioned.

Nothing could satisfy her new-found ambition on behalf of her poet less than at least half the six millions she had talked of in her second letter.

Trebly agitated by her two joys and the grief caused by her comparative poverty, she seated herself at the piano, that confidant of so many young girls, who tell out their wishes and provocations on the keys, expressing them by the notes and tones of their music.