came in exclaiming, "Here's papa!"

"Madeleine?" said her mother, gently.

The child at once held out her hand to Monsieur de Chessel, and looked
attentively at me after making a little bow with an air of
astonishment.

"Are you more satisfied about her health?" asked Monsieur de Chessel.

"She is better," replied the countess, caressing the little head which
was already nestling in her lap.

The next question of Monsieur de Chessel let me know that Madeleine
was nine years old; I showed great surprise, and immediately the
clouds gathered on the mother's brow. My companion threw me a
significant look,--one of those which form the education of men of the
world. I had stumbled no doubt upon some maternal wound the covering
of which should have been respected. The sickly child, whose eyes were
pallid and whose skin was white as a porcelain vase with a light
within it, would probably not have lived in the atmosphere of a city.
Country air and her mother's brooding care had kept the life in that
frail body, delicate as a hot-house plant growing in a harsh and
foreign climate. Though in nothing did she remind me of her mother,
Madeleine seemed to have her soul, and that soul held her up. Her hair
was scanty and black, her eyes and cheeks hollow, her arms thin, her
chest narrow, showing a battle between life and death, a duel without
truce in which the mother had so far been victorious. The child willed
to live,--perhaps to spare her mother, for at times, when not
observed, she fell into the attitude of a weeping-willow. You might