ried
to forget that blow, or to persuade herself that it had not been dealt.

Maurice did not know what answer to make, and remained silent.

"Aunt, you would not think of having cousin Tristan brought here until
he is nearly well,--that is, well enough to walk about,--would you?"
asked Bertha; and her accents expressed her disapproval of such an
attempt.

"He shall come the very moment that it is possible! Do you suppose that
I would submit to his remaining where he is one instant longer than is
absolutely necessary?"

No reply to this declaration was needed or expected. Maurice returned to
Madeleine's house with a sense of thankfulness that the count's seizure
had taken place where it did.

Gaston and the housekeeper were the watchers beside the count that
night, taking the places of Madeleine and Maurice at midnight,--this
exchange having now become the established rule for alternate nights.

In spite of the iron-like constitution, and iron-like character of the
countess,--in spite of her valiant, her desperate struggles,--her
strength began to fail under the pressure of her hidden sorrow. She was
unwilling to admit that she was subject to bodily any more than to
mental infirmities. She belonged to that rare class described by the
poet when he speaks of one who

"Scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone."

And though she had been suffering for days from a low nervous fever,
neither her words nor actions gave the slightest indication that she was
not in her usual health. But, one morning, when she endeavored to rise,
her limbs refused to support her,--her head swam,--it was with
difficulty that she poured out a glass of water to cool her parched and
burning lips, and she was so fearful of falling (there seemed something
positively awful to her in the possibility of _prostration_, perhaps on
account of the fall it typified) that she staggered back to bed and
there remained.

Neither Bertha's persuasions, nor those of Maurice, could induce her to
allow a physician to be summoned. Maurice suggested Dr. Bayard, who was
attending Count Tristan, but the countess was even more opposed to him
than to any other medical attendant. Was he not aware of her
relationship to the _mantua-maker_? Had he not seen Count Tristan
recognize that humble and degraded relative when he did not know his own
mother?--his own son? No,--she never allowed ph