nds on the fair head of her niece; "your
beautiful mother belongs to the unforgettable memories, of those twenty
years. . . ."

"And not only my beautiful mother, aunt dear. There are men living in
England to-day whose names must remain for ever engraved upon my
father's heart, as well as on mine--if we should ever forget those
names and neglect for one single day our prayers of gratitude for their
welfare and their reward, we should be the meanest and blackest of
ingrates."

"Ah!" said Madame, "I am glad that Monsieur my brother remembers all
that in the midst of his restored grandeur."

"Have you been wronging him in your heart all this while, _ma tante_?"
asked Crystal, and there was a slight tone of reproach in her voices
"you used not to be so cynical once upon a time."

"Cynical!" exclaimed the Duchesse, "bless the child's heart! Of course I
am cynical--at my age what can you expect?--and what can I expect? But
there, don't distress yourself, I am not wronging your father--far from
it--only this grandeur--the state dinner last night--his gracious
manner--all that upset me. I am not used to it, my dear, you see. Twenty
years in that diminutive house in Worcester have altered my tastes, I
see, more than they did your father's . . . and these last ten months
which he seems to have spent in reviving the old grandeur of his
ancestral home, I spent, remember, with the dear little Sisters of Mercy
at Boulogne, praying amidst very humble surroundings that the future may
not become more unendurable than the past."

"But you are glad to be back at Brestalou again? and you _will_ remain
here with us--always?" queried Crystal, and with tender eagerness she
clasped the older woman's hands closely in her own.

"Yes, dear," replied Madame gently. "I am glad to be back in the old
chateau--my dear old home--where I was very happy and very young
once--oh, so very long ago! And I will remain with your father and look
after him all the time that his young bird is absent from the nest."

Again she stroked her niece's soft, wavy hair with a gesture which
apparently was habitual with her, and it seemed as if a note of sadness
had crept into her brisk, sharp voice. Over Crystal's cheeks a wave of
crimson had quickly swept at her aunt's last words: and the eyes which
she now raised to Madame's kindly face were full of tears.

"It seems so terribly soon now, _ma tante_," she said wistfully.

"Hm, yes!" quoth Mme. la Duchesse dril