ered:

"Oh, no, my dear. You have always been like this."

Jeanne went to her own room and cried bitterly when she had taken her
parents upstairs. Then she went to her father and, throwing herself in
his arms, said, with her eyes still full of tears:

"Oh, how changed mother is! What is the matter with her? Do tell me what
is the matter with her?"

"Do you think she is changed?" asked the baron in surprise. "It must be
your fancy. You know I have been with her all this time, and to me she
seems just the same as she has always been; she is not any worse."

"Your mother is in a bad way," said Julien to his wife that evening. "I
don't think she's good for much now."

Jeanne burst into tears.

"Oh, good gracious!" went on Julien irritably. "I don't say that she is
dangerously ill. You always see so much more than is meant. She is
changed, that's all; it's only natural she should begin to break up at
her age."

In a week Jeanne had got accustomed to her mother's altered appearance
and thought no more about it, thrusting her fears from her, as people
always do put aside their fears and cares, with an instinctive and
natural, though selfish dislike of anything unpleasant.

The baroness, unable to walk, only went out for about half an hour every
day. When she had gone once up and down "her" avenue, she could not move
another step and asked to sit down on "her" seat. Some days she could
not walk even to the end of the avenue, and would say:

"Let us stop; my hypertrophy is too much for me to-day."

She never laughed as she used to; things which, the year before, would
have sent her into fits of laughter, only brought a faint smile to her
lips now. Her eyesight was still excellent, and she passed her time in
reading _Corinne_ and Lamartine's _Meditations_ over again, and in going
through her "Souvenir-drawer." She would empty on her knees the old
letters, which were so dear to her heart, place the drawer on a chair
beside her, look slowly over each "relic," and then put it back in its
place. When she was quite alone she kissed some of the letters as she
might have kissed the hair of some loved one who was dead.

Jeanne, coming into the room suddenly, sometimes found her in tears.

"What is the matter, mamma, dear?" she would ask.

"My souvenirs have upset me," the baroness would answer, with a
long-drawn sigh. "They bring to my mind so vividly the happy times which
are all over now, and make me think of people who