Another French family group, equally charming, on the self-same spot,
but in the garb of to-day, and no longer shadowy or mute by any means.
Little trees have grown big; big trees have disappeared to make place
for industrious workshops and machinery; but the old abbey walls have
been respected, and gay, genial father, and handsome mother, and lovely
daughters, all pressing on "la belle Duchesse Anglaise" peaches and
apricots of her great-great-grandmother's growing.

For this amiable family of the Chamorin became devoted to Mary in a very
short time--that is, the very moment they first saw her; and she never
forgot their kindness, courtesy, and hospitality; they made her feel in
five minutes as though she had known them for many years.

I may as well state here that a few months later she received from
Mademoiselle du Chamorin (with a charming letter) the identical violin
that had once belonged to _la belle Verriere_, and which Count Hector
had found in the possession of an old farmer--the great-grandson of
Gatienne's coachman--and had purchased, that he might present it as a
New-year's gift to her descendant, the Duchess of Towers.

It is now mine, alas! I cannot play it; but it amuses and comforts me to
hold in my hand, when broad and wide awake, an instrument that Mary and
I have so often heard and seen in our dream, and which has so often rung
in by-gone days with the strange melody that has had so great an
influence on our lives. Its aspect, shape, and color, every mark and
stain of it, were familiar to us before we had ever seen it with the
bodily eye or handled it with the hand of flesh. It thus came straight
to us out of the dim and distant past, heralded by the ghost of itself!