ve such kind hearts. But how
pale you are?" added the soldier looking nearer at Frances; "what is the
matter, my poor wife? Are you ill?"

Dagobert took Frances's hand affectionately in his own but the latter,
painfully agitated by these words, pronounced with touching goodness,
bowed her head and wept as she kissed her husband's hand. The soldier,
growing more and more uneasy as he felt the scalding tears of his wife,
exclaimed: "You weep, you do not answer--tell me, then, the cause of
your grief, poor wife! Is it because I spoke a little loud, in asking
you how you could let the dear children go out with a neighbor? Remember
their dying mother entrusted them to my care--'tis sacred, you see--and
with them, I am like an old hen after her chickens," added he, laughing
to enliven Frances.

"Yes, you are right in loving them!"

"Come, then--becalm--you know me of old. With my great, hoarse voice,
I am not so bad a fellow at bottom. As you can trust to this neighbor,
there is no great harm done; but, in future, my good Frances, do not
take any step with regard to the children without consulting me. They
asked, I suppose, to go out for a little stroll with Spoil-sport?"

"No, my dear!"

"No! Who is this neighbor, to whom you have entrusted them? Where has
she taken them? What time will she bring them back?"

"I do not know," murmured Frances, in a failing voice.

"You do not know!" cried Dagobert, with indignation; but restraining
himself, he added, in a tone of friendly reproach: "You do not know? You
cannot even fix an hour, or, better still, not entrust them to any one?
The children must have been very anxious to go out. They knew that I
should return at any moment, so why not wait for me--eh, Frances? I ask
you, why did they not wait for me? Answer me, will you!--Zounds! you
would make a saint swear!" cried Dagobert, stamping his foot; "answer
me, I say!"

The courage of Frances was fast failing. These pressing and reiterated
questions, which might end by the discovery of the truth, made her
endure a thousand slow and poignant tortures. She preferred coming
at once to the point, and determined to bear the full weight of her
husband's anger, like a humble and resigned victim, obstinately faithful
to the promise she had sworn to her confessor.

Not having the strength to rise, she bowed her head, allowed her arms to
fall on either side of the chair, and said to her husband in a tone of
the deepest despondency: