his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness.
This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no
longer need for secrecy.

"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past
forgiveness," he thought.

In the morning he was dead.

The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected
the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet,
who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave
Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that
was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but
not a mean or ignominious, funeral.

"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring
garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little
thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us
to know that."

And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the
dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow
streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave.

Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of
age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport
of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had
been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to
her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his