in the dark. "I only see this much," she said in an off-hand manner,
"that mamma loves you already, and will do still more so when she gets
to know you personally. And that is all that matters."

It was on the second Sunday after their arrival in Paris that the
children came to visit their mother. Pilar looked forward with some
uneasiness to Wilhelm's first meeting with them, and he too felt far
from comfortable when Pilar brought a half-grown girl and a ten-year
old boy to him, and addressing herself to them said, "Embrace Monsieur
le Docteur, and look at him well. He is the best friend your mother has
on earth. You must love him very much, for he deserves it."

The girl was fair like her mother. She was already dressed with
conspicuous elegance, and her manner betrayed extreme
self-consciousness. She glanced at Wilhelm with sly and wanton eyes, in
which it was easily to be read that she had a very good idea of the
real state of the case. She offered her forehead for his kiss, bestowed
a few cold and perfunctory caresses on her mother, and slipped away to
Anne, with whom she spent the whole afternoon in eager whispered
conversation, till the governess came to take her back to the
fashionable boarding school where she was being trained to be a perfect
great lady, and to make some enviable man happy in the future by the
bestowal of her hand.

The boy, who was accompanied by a priest, and was being educated at a
fashionable Jesuit institution, was of a better sort. He gave his hand
to Wilhelm shyly but heartily, while his innocent eyes looked frankly
and openly into his, and then hung over his mother with a tenderness
that had a touch of chivalry in it--half-funny, half-affecting. Wilhelm
felt decidedly drawn to the slender, healthy-looking boy.

But in the course of the afternoon another--a third child--appeared
upon the scene; a lovely, brown, four-year-old boy, with bold black
eyes and long raven curls, whom a maid-servant brought to Pilar that he
might kiss his mamma.

Wilhelm was much surprised. "Three? You never told me that," he
whispered.

"This is little Manuel, my sweet little Manuelito," she answered in a
low voice, and buried her face in the child's black curls that she
might not have to look at Wilhelm. She covered little Manuelito with
kisses, and then pushed him gently over to Wilhelm, in whom the most
conflicting emotions were struggling for the mastery. It was impossible
to feel any ill-will towa