st
application of the leeches proved unsuccessful. The minutes slipped
away. The only sound breaking the stillness of the shadowy chamber was
the merciless, incessant tick-tack of the timepiece. Hope departed
with every second. In the bright disc of light cast by the lamp,
Jeanne lay stretched among the disordered bedclothes, with limbs of
waxen pallor. Helene, with tearless eyes, but choking with emotion,
gazed on the little body already in the clutches of death, and to see
a drop of her daughter's blood appear, would willingly have yielded up
all her own. And at last a ruddy drop trickled down--the leeches had
made fast their hold; one by one they commenced sucking. The child's
life was in the balance. These were terrible moments, pregnant with
anguish. Was that sigh the exhalation of Jeanne's last breath, or did
it mark her return to life? For a time Helene's heart was frozen
within her; she believed that the little one was dead; and there came
to her a violent impulse to pluck away the creatures which were
sucking so greedily; but some supernatural power restrained her, and
she remained there with open mouth and her blood chilled within her.
The pendulum still swung to and fro; the room itself seemed to wait
the issue in anxious expectation.

At last the child stirred. Her heavy eyelids rose, but dropped again,
as though wonder and weariness had overcome her. A slight quiver
passed over her face; it seemed as if she were breathing. Finally
there was a trembling of the lips; and Helene, in an agony of
suspense, bent over her, fiercely awaiting the result.

"Mamma! mamma!" murmured Jeanne.

Henri heard, and walking to the head of the bed, whispered in the
mother's ear: "She is saved."

"She is saved! she is saved!" echoed Helene in stammering tones, her
bosom filled with such joy that she fell on the floor close to the
bed, gazing now at her daughter and now at the doctor with distracted
looks. But she rose and giving way to a mighty impulse, threw herself
on Henri's neck.

"I love you!" she exclaimed.

This was her avowal--the avowal imprisoned so long, but at last poured
forth in the crisis of emotion which had come upon her. Mother and
lover were merged in one; she proffered him her love in a fiery rush
of gratitude.

Through her sobs she spoke to him in endearing words. Her tears, dried
at their source for three weeks, were now rolling down her cheeks. But
at last she fell upon her knees, and took Jeanne