to entreat you to return to me. Think
how I am left, lonely, aged and ill, the whole year with only a
servant. I am living now in a little house by the roadside and it
is very miserable for me, but if you were here everything would
seem different. You are all I have in the world, and I have not
seen you for seven years. You will never know how unhappy I have
been and how my every thought was centered in you. You were my
life, my soul, my only hope, my only love, and you are away from
me, you have forsaken me.

"Oh! come back, my darling Poulet, come back, and let me hold you
in my arms again; come back to your old mother who so longs to see
you.

JEANNE."

A few days later came the following reply:

"My Dear Mother--I should only be too glad to come and see you, but
I have not a penny; send me some money and I will come. I had
myself been thinking of coming to speak to you about a plan which,
if carried out, would permit me to do as you desire.

"I shall never be able to repay the disinterested affection of the
woman who has shared all my troubles, but I can at least make a
public recognition of her faithful love and devotion. Her behavior
is all you could desire; she is well-educated and well-read and you
cannot imagine what a comfort she has been to me. I should be a
brute if I did not make her some recompense, and I ask your
permission to marry her. Then we could all live together in your
new house, and you would forgive my follies. I am convinced that
you would give your consent at once, if you knew her; I assure you
she is very lady-like and quiet, and I know you would like her. As
for me, I could not live without her.

"I shall await your reply with every impatience, dear mother. We
both send you much love.--Your son,

"Vicomte Paul de Lamare."

Jeanne was thunderstruck. As she sat with the letter on her knees, she
could see so plainly through the designs of this woman who had not once
let Paul return to his friends, but had always kept him at her side
while she patiently waited until his mother should give in and consent
to anything and everything in the irresistible desire of having her son
with her again; and it was with bitter pain that she thought of how Paul
obstina