"Perhaps," said I, "the very letters now unopened in your hands may invite you back to the scenes of your childhood."
"Alas! no," she rejoined, "I recognize the handwriting of my widowed aunt, and I tremble to break the seal."
Rising shortly afterwards, I bade her a sorrowful farewell.
Lucile sought her private apartment before she ventured to unseal the dispatches. Many of the letters were old, and had been floating between New York and Havre for more than a twelvemonth. One was of recent date, and that was the first one perused by the niece. Below is a free translation of its contents. It bore date at "Bordeaux, July 12, 1853," and ran thus:
Ever dear and beloved Brother:
Why have we never heard from you since the beginning of 1851? Alas! I fear some terrible misfortune has overtaken you, and overwhelmed your whole family. Many times have I written during that long period, and prayed, oh! so promptly, that God would take you, and yours, in His holy keeping. And then our dear Lucile! Ah! what a life must be in store for her, in that wild and distant land! Beg of her to return to France; and do not fail, also, to come yourself. We have a new Emperor, as you must long since have learned, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon. Your reactionist principles against Cavaignac and his colleagues, can be of no disservice to you at present. Napoleon is lenient. He has even recalled Louis Blanc. Come, and apply for restitution of the old estates; come, and be a protector of my seven orphans, now, alas! suffering even for the common necessaries of life. Need a fond sister say more to her only living brother?
Thine, as in childhood,
Annette.
"Misfortunes pour like a pitiless winter storm upon my devoted head," thought Lucile, as she replaced the letter in its envelope. "Parents dead; aunt broken-hearted; cousins starving, and I not able to afford relief. I cannot even moisten their sorrows with a tear. I would weep, but rebellion against fate rises in my soul, and dries up the fountain of tears. Had Heaven made me a man it would not have been thus. I have something here," she exclaimed, rising from her seat and placing her hand upon her forehead, "that tells me I could do and dare, and endure."
Her further soliloquy was here interrupted by a distinct rap at her door, and on pronouncing the word "enter," Pollexfen, for the first time since she became a member of his family, strode heavily into her chamber. Lucile did not scream, or protest, or manifest either surprise or displeasure at this unwonted and uninvited visit. She politely pointed to a seat, and the photographer, without apology or hesitation, seized the chair, and moving it so closely to her own that they came in contact, seated himself without uttering a syllable. Then, drawing a document from his breast pocket, which was folded formally, and sealed with two seals, but subscribed only with one name, he proceeded to read it from beginning to end, in a slow, distinct, and unfaltering tone.