nd comfort of the home that awaited her in my father's
house; of the gratitude which the old man would feel towards her; and
how there, in that peaceful dwelling, far away from the terrible land
of France, she should find ease and security for all the rest of her
life. All this I thought I had to promise, and even yet more had I
looked for, for myself. I looked to the unburdening of my heart and
conscience by telling all I knew to my best and wisest friend. I looked
to his love as a sure guidance as well as a comforting stay, and,
behold, he was gone away from me for ever!

I had left the room hastily on hearing of this sad news from the
Heidelberger. Presently, Amante followed:

"Poor madame," said she, consoling me to the best of her ability. And
then she told me by degrees what more she had learned respecting my
home, about which she knew almost as much as I did, from my frequent
talks on the subject both at Les Rochers and on the dreary, doleful road
we had come along. She had continued the conversation after I left, by
asking about my brother and his wife. Of course, they lived on at the
mill, but the man said (with what truth I know not, but I believed it
firmly at the time) that Babette had completely got the upper hand of my
brother, who only saw through her eyes and heard with her ears. That
there had been much Heidelberg gossip of late days about her sudden
intimacy with a grand French gentleman who had appeared at the mill--a
relation, by marriage--married, in fact, to the miller's sister, who,
by all accounts, had behaved abominably and ungratefully. But that was
no reason for Babette's extreme and sudden intimacy with him, going
about everywhere with the French gentleman; and since he left (as the
Heidelberger said he knew for a fact) corresponding with him constantly.
Yet her husband saw no harm in it all, seemingly; though, to be sure, he
was so out of spirits, what with his father's death and the news of his
sister's infamy, that he hardly knew how to hold up his head.

"Now," said Amante, "all this proves that M. de la Tourelle has
suspected that you would go back to the nest in which you were reared,
and that he has been there, and found that you have not yet returned;
but probably he still imagines that you will do so, and has accordingly
engaged your sister-in-law as a kind of informant. Madame has said that
her sister-in-law bore her no extreme good-will; and the defamatory
story he has got the st