“What became of la Chantefleurie?” she said, repeating mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in her ear; then, ma king an effort to recall her attention to the meaning of her words, “Ah!” she continued briskly, “no one ever found out.”

She added, after a pause, —

“Some said that she had been seen to quit Reims at nightfall by the Fl�chembault gate; others, at daybreak, by the old Bas�e gate. A poor man found her gold cross hanging on the stone cross in the field where the fair is held. It was that ornament which had wrought her ruin, in ‘61.

It was a gift from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette had never been willing to part with it, wretched as she had