father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have
some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she
was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow
also, for whose return she looked daily.

For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days
after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably
established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a
home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew
of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the
father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that
name had never been spoken in his hearing.

When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England,
all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the
neighbours who had known the absent woman.

"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the
labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her
she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no
moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her
husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind
of fever, and the strength of fever."

"And there has come no letter--nothing?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle."

On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well
leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by