worst.

"One would think he had no heart," said Mere Giraud; "but men are often
so,--ready to work, but cold and dumb. Ah! it is only a mother who bears
the deepest grief."

She fought passionately enough for a hope at first, but it was forced
from her grasp in the end. Death had entered the house and spoken to her
in the changed voice which had summoned her from her sleep.

"Madame," said the doctor one evening as they stood over the bed while
the sun went down, "I have done all that is possible. She will not see
the sun set again. She may not see it rise."

Mere Giraud fell upon her knees beside the bed, crossing herself and
weeping.

"She will die," she said, "a blessed martyr. She will die the death of a
saint."

That very night--only a few hours later--there came to them a
friend,--one they had not for one moment even hoped to see,--a gentle,
grave old man, in a thin, well-worn black robe,--the _Cure_ of St.
Croix.

Him Valentin met also, and when the two saw each other, there were
barriers that fell away in their first interchange of looks.

"My son," said the old man, holding out his hands, "tell me the truth."

Then Valentin fell into a chair and hid his face

"She is dying," he said, "and I cannot ask that she should live."

"What was my life"--he cried passionately, speaking again--"what was my
life to me that I should not have given it to save her,--to save her
to her beauty and honor, and her mother's love! I would have given it
cheerfully,--a thousand times,--a thousand times again and again. But it
was not to be; and, in spite of my prayers, I lost her. O my God!" with
a sob of agony, "if to-night she were in St. Croix and I could hear the
neighbors call her again as they used, 'Mere Giraud's little daughter!'"

The eyes of the _Cure_ had tears in them also.

"Yesterday I returned to St. Croix and found your mother absent," he
said. "I have had terrible fears for months, and when I found her house
closed, they caused me to set out upon my journey at once."

He did not ask any questions. He remembered too well the man of whom
Valentin had written; the son who was "past his youth, and had evidently
seen the world;" the pale aristocrat, who had exclaimed "_Mon Dieu!_" at
the sight of Laure's wondrous beauty.

"When the worst came to the worst," said Valentin, "I vowed myself to
the labor of sparing our mother. I have worked early and late to sustain
myself in the part I played. It was not f