but he had never had
to deal a heavier blow than when he told her her favourite son was
drowned, the son of whom she was so proud, whom she loved better than
all her other children; but the baroness was a saintly woman, and one of
her first sayings after she heard the news was, "Mon pere, it is hard,
but it is just--he was my idol."

She did not grieve in any extravagant way; she did not absent herself
from any meals; she attended mass, for she was a devout Catholic, in the
private chapel every morning, and, indeed, spent a great deal of time
there in prayer; she never gave up one of her accustomed duties, visited
the poor as regularly as ever, but from the day she heard the sad news
to her death, which happened a few years later, she was scarcely seen
to smile again, and she was never heard to mention Leon's name except to
Pere Yvon. Hers was a life-long sorrow, too deep for words, too deep for
even tears to assuage its poignancy; her heart was broken; she had no
further interest in this life; all her hopes were centred on that life
where she hoped to meet her darling son again, never to be separated
from him.

The young baroness bore her trial very differently. She gave way to a
passionate outburst of grief on learning that her baby was drowned--a
grief in which the baron shared, and was, indeed, in more need of
consolation than his wife, for to his sorrow was added remorse and
bitterest stings of conscience for having brought such sorrow to his
wife, about whom he was very anxious, until the doctor assured him the
sad certainty was even better for her than the terrible suspense she had
been enduring for the last week. To a young, passionate nature hitherto
undisciplined by the sorrows of life, like the young baroness's,
anything was easier to bear than suspense, and the doctor assured Arnaud
that the passionate grief in which his wife indulged would do her no
harm--on the contrary, she was more likely to get over it quickly.
Violent grief is rarely lasting; there invariably follows a reaction.

A few days later the baron received another telegram from the Havre
agents, telling him they had found out that the Hirondelle had left
Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast, where she had been lying for two or
three days, the day before she was lost, and was then intending to
cruise round the coast of Great Britain. The baron was immediately
raised from the depths of despair to the highest pinnacle of hope on
hearing this, for he