all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt me while I think of
Stephanie? I am going over to the Minorite convent, to see her and
speak to her, to restore her to health again. She is free; ah, surely,
surely, happiness will smile on us, or there is no Providence above.
How can you think she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, and not
recover her reason?"

"She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize you," the
magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some wholesome fears to
this friend, whose hopes were visibly too high.

The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with a slight
involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured to oppose his
plans, and a few hours later he had taken up his abode in the old
priory, to be near the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandieres.

"Where is she?" he cried at once.

"Hush!" answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie's uncle. "She is sleeping. Stay;
here she is."

Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone bench in
the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, screened it from
the glare and heat; her arms dropped languidly to the earth; she lay
at ease as gracefully as a fawn, her feet tucked up beneath her; her
bosom rose and fell with her even breathing; there was the same
transparent whiteness as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that
we so often admire in children's faces. Genevieve sat there
motionless, holding a spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought down
from the top of one of the tallest poplars; the idiot girl was waving