"It was Jules--"

"It was her--"

Their little hands were held out to their mother, and the two childish
voices mingled; it was an unexpected and charming picture.

"Poor little things!" cried the Countess, no longer restraining her
tears, "I shall have to leave them. To whom will the law assign them?
A mother's heart cannot be divided; I want them, I want them."

"Are you making mamma cry?" said Jules, looking fiercely at the
Colonel.

"Silence, Jules!" said the mother in a decided tone.

The two children stood speechless, examining their mother and the
stranger with a curiosity which it is impossible to express in words.

"Oh yes!" she cried. "If I am separated from the Count, only leave me
my children, and I will submit to anything . . ."

This was the decisive speech which gained all that she had hoped from
it.

"Yes," exclaimed the Colonel, as if he were ending a sentence already
begun in his mind, "I must return underground again. I had told myself
so already."