* * * * *

Two days later Catalina was out of danger! It was my father who told me the
good news on my return from school. "Oh, how happy, how happy I am,
father!" I cried as I danced for joy.

"No more than I am, my daughter," he answered gravely.



CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FIVE-FRANC PIECE

Catalina recovered slowly and seemed to constantly desire Paula's company.
In the afternoon, on returning from school, I would find her by the
bedside, always happy, always smiling, with the complete forgetfulness of
self that had always been such a wonder to me.

A new gentleness seemed to come over my father as the days passed, and I
noticed that he always seemed to observe Paula with a sort of puzzled air.

Paula, too, seemed to change. That little Alpine flower, accustomed to the
pure mountain air of her beloved country, naturally could not be
transplanted from her native soil without some damage, and besides, that
sensitive conscience of hers always seemed to be in a struggle between
obedience to her God and her duty towards my father.

"That girl is nothing more or less than stubborn," I heard my father say
one day to Teresa; which remark our old servant answered with a grimace