"Oh! how happy I am!" she said, showering kisses and tears on her son.
"He understands me!--Louis," she went on, "you will be your brother's
guardian, will you not? You promise me that? You are no longer a
child!"

"Yes, I promise," he said; "but you are not going to die yet--say that
you are not going to die!"

"Poor little ones!" she replied, "love for you keeps the life in me.
And this country is so sunny, the air is so bracing, perhaps----"

"You make me love Touraine more than ever," said the child.

From that day, when Mme. Willemsens, foreseeing the approach of death,
spoke to Louis of his future, he concentrated his attention on his
work, grew more industrious, and less inclined to play than
heretofore. When he had coaxed Marie to read a book and to give up
boisterous games, there was less noise in the hollow pathways and
gardens and terraced walks of La Grenadiere. They adapted their lives
to their mother's melancholy. Day by day her face was growing pale and
wan, there were hollows now in her temples, the lines in her forehead
grew deeper night after night.

August came. The little family had been five months at La Grenadiere,
and their whole life was changed. The old servant grew anxious and
gloomy as she watched the almost imperceptible symptoms of slow
decline in the mistress, who seemed to be kept in life by an
impassioned soul and intense love of her children. Old Annette seemed
to see that death was very near. That mistress, beautiful still, was
more careful of her appearance than she had ever been; she was at