he hearth and
stirred the fire, the old man sitting rigid in his chair and regarding
her with fixed, watchful eyes. Then she found two candles and lighted
them, placing them on the mantel, and turning to the crasset hanging by
its osier rings from a beam, slowly lighted it. Turning round, she was
full in the light of the candles and the shooting flames of the fire.

De Mauprat's eyes had followed her every motion, unconscious of his
presence as she was. This--this was not the Guida he had known! This
was not his grandchild, this woman with the pale, cold face, and dark,
unhappy eyes; this was not the laughing girl who but yesterday was a
babe at his knee. This was not--

The truth, which had yet been before his blinded eyes how long! burst
upon him. The shock of it snapped the filmy thread of being. As the
escaping soul found its wings, spread them, and rose from that dun
morass called Life, the Sieur de Mauprat, giving a long, deep sigh, fell
back in his great arm-chair dead, and the silver snuff-box rattled to
the floor.

Guida turned round with a sharp cry. Running to him, she lifted up the
head that lay over on his shoulder. She felt his pulse, she called to
him. Opening his waistcoat, she put her ear to his heart; but it was
still--still.

A mist, a blackness, came over her own eyes, and without a cry or a
word, she slid to the floor unconscious, as the black thunderstorm broke
upon the Place du Vier Prison.

The rain was like a curtain let down between the prying, clattering
world without and the strange peace within: the old man in his perfect
sleep; the young, misused wife in that passing oblivion borrowed from
death and as tender and compassionate while it lasts.

As though with merciful indulgence, Fate permitted no one to enter upon
the dark scene save a woman in whom was a deep motherhood which had
never nourished a child, and to whom this silence and this sorrow gave
no terrors. Silence was her constant companion, and for sorrow she had
been granted the touch that assuages the sharpness of pain and the love
called neighbourly kindness. Maitresse Aimable came.

Unto her it was given to minister here. As the night went by, and the
offices had been done for the dead, she took her place by the bedside of
the young wife, who lay staring into space, tearless and still, the life
consuming away within her.

In the front room of the cottage, his head buried in his hands, Ranulph
Delagarde sat watching besi