carefully bandaging his hand. With what tenderness she folded and tightened the linen. He had injured himself in some slight way with a broken bottle, and was smilingly watching her work whilst hearkening to the babble of the little ones who, in wadded dressing-gowns, were toasting their pink toes before the fire.

"You are so good to all of us," softly remarked Clovis. "Camille and Victor, say, do you appreciate mademoiselle?"

"I try to be a mother to them," was her calm response.

A mother! Clovis sighed and frowned, while the children cried out with blithe accord, "Aglaé? of course we love her."

Camille, stealing up behind, passed her tiny arms about the portly waist, while Aglaé said, quietly, "Be still, my pet, or you will make me hurt your father."

Victor--a wise boy--wagged his head sagely at the hissing hearth, and announced his conviction, "That mademoiselle had come down from heaven. But, never mind," he added, "when she gets back she'll have a higher place than before, on such a nice and pearly cloud."

"How's that?" asked the marquis, amused.

"You'll have a nice place, too," continued the urchin. "Every evening when I say my prayers, I ask heaven to be good to papa and mademoiselle."

The marquise staggered away with fingers tight clasped over dry and burning eyes. "They are complete without me," she moaned, panting like a hunted animal. "There is no place for me! no place in all the world!"

She tottered along the surrounding belt of green like one struck blind, till she came to the end where the moat was closed against the river.

"No place for me! no place for me!" Gabrielle muttered, with teeth that chattered as do those of one in an ague fit. Swaying to and fro she looked into the water and discerned the black bulk of the wherry. A luminous idea shot across her mind. If the boat were found drifting down the stream with naught but a silken wrap in it, they would drag the Loire for the missing chatelaine, and, at least, pretend to be sorry for the accident. Yes! an accident--that was the solution of the difficulty. Her father would deplore her death, but would never know that she had brought it about herself. Why had this never occurred to her before? The maréchal would grieve, but would get over it; for the grief of the old is short-lived, and are not the dead at rest? 

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