I saw little on either side of it. She was a name, that I found written
in the front of the missal, and copied over and over down foolscap paper
in my practice of script:

"Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier."
"Eagle Madeleine Marie de Ferrier."

She stood in her sitting room, which looked upon the lake, and before a
word passed between us I saw she was unlike any of her former selves.
Her features were sharpened and whitened. She looked beyond me with gray
colored eyes, and held her lips apart.

"I have news. The Indian brought me this letter from Albany."

I could not help glancing curiously at the sheet in her hand, spotted on
the back with broken red wafers. It was the first letter I had ever
seen. Doctor Chantry told me he received but one during the winter from
his sister, and paid two Spanish reals in postage for it, besides a fee
and some food and whisky to the Indian who made the journey to deliver
such parcels. It was a trying and an important experience to receive a
letter. I was surprised that Madame Tank had recommended my sending one
into the Wisconsin country.

"Count de Chaumont is gone; and I must have advice."

"Madame," I said, "Doctor Chantry was asleep, but I will wake him and
bring him here."

"No. I will tell you. Monsieur, my Cousin Philippe is dead."

It might have shocked me more if I had known she had a Cousin Philippe.
I said stupidly:

"Is he?"

"Cousin Philippe was my husband, you understand."

"Madame, are you married?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed. And I confessed to myself that in no other
way could Paul be accounted for.

"But you are here alone?"

Two large tears ran down her face.

"You should understand the De Ferriers are poor, monsieur, unless
something can be saved from our estates that the Bonapartes have given
away. Cousin Philippe went to see if we could recover any part of them.
Count de Chaumont thought it a favorable time. But he was too old for
such a journey; and the disappointments at the end of it."

"Old! Was he old, madame?"

"Almost as old as my father."

"But you are very young."

"I was only thirteen when my father on his deathbed married me to Cousin
Philippe. We were the last of our family. Now Cousin Philippe is dead
and Paul and I are orphans!"

She felt her loss as Paul might have felt his. He was gurgling at
Ernestine's knee in the next room.

"I want advice," she said; and I stood ready to give it, as a man always
is; the m