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"She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you."

"So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way-have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could-I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress.

I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door.

But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?"

"The figure was not; the-the-image; the fancy?"

"No. That was another thing.

It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved.

The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child.

Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother.

The other had that likeness too-as you have-but was not the same.

Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions."

His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.

"In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father.

My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers.

Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all."

"I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I."

"And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me.

When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers.

She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things.

But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her."

"I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?"

"Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us."

He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house.

There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross.

The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.

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