"He gave me very good advice."

"Which you are following, madame?"

"When one not only has seen death smite another beside one but flit
close by oneself, I assure you, girl, it forces one to reflect. Oh, how
dreadful the nights are in the sick chamber, with a night-light dimly
burning and the sufferer moaning and tossing! Then my turn came to
occupy the patient's position, and it was frightful. Can you not see I
am much altered--horrid, in fact?"

Hedwig shook her head; without flattery, well as her mistress assumed
the air of languor, her figure had not been affected by any event since
the slaying of the Viscount Gratian, and her countenance was unmarred by
any change except a trifling pallor.

"Yes; after my uncle grew better, I was indisposed and should have died
but for the cares of an old friend, Madame Lesperon the Female Bard. But
you would not know this favorite of the Muses. You are not poetically
inclined, Hedwig!" she added, laughingly. Rising with animation, "but
that makes no matter! I am glad to see you home again. I thought of you,
Hedwig, and I have bought you something pretty to wear on your days
out--bought it in Paris, too."

"Is that so?" exclaimed the girl, much less absent and saucy in the curl
of her lip; "you are always kind."

"Yes; they are in my new trunk, for which you had better send the
gardener at once. He is not forgotten either. There is a set of jewelry,
too, in the old Teutonic style. They say now in Paris that any idea of