her gayety was gone. In vain did Cecile, who had been told
that Madame D'Argenton was separated from her husband, try with minor
cares to efface the painful impression of the day; in vain did Jack seek
to interest her in all his projects for the future.

"You see, my child," she said, on her way home, "that it is not best for
me to come here with you. I have suffered too much, and the wound is too
recent."

Her voice trembled, and it was easy to see that, after all the
humiliations to which she had been subjected by this man, she yet loved
him.

For many Sundays after, Jack came alone to Etiolles, and relinquished
what to him was the greatest happiness of the day, the twilight walk,
and the quiet talk with Cecile, that he might return to Paris in time to
dine with his mother. He took the afternoon train, and passed from
the tranquillity of the country to the animation of a Sunday in the
Faubourg. The sidewalks were covered by little tables, where families
sat drinking their coffee, and crowds were standing, with their noses in
the air, watching an enormous yellow balloon that had just been released
from its moorings.

In remoter streets, people sat on the steps of the doors, and in the
courtyard of the large, silent house the concierge was chatting with his
neighbors, who had taken chairs out to breathe air a little fresher than
they could obtain in their confined quarters within.

Sometimes, in Jack's absence, Ida, tired of her loneliness, went to
a little reading-room kept by a certain Madame Leveque. The shop was
filled with mouldy books, was literally obstructed by magazines and
illustrated papers, which she let for a sou a day.

Here lived a dirty, pretentious old woman, who spent her time in making
a certain kind of antiquated trimming of narrow, colored ribbons.

It seems that Madame Leveque had known better days, and that under the
first empire her father was a man of considerable importance. "I am the
godchild of the Duc de Dantzic," she said to Ida, with emphasis. She was
one of the relics of past days, such as one finds occasionally in the
secluded corners of old Paris. Like the dusty contents of her shop, her
gilt-edged books torn and incomplete, her conversation glittered with
stories of past splendors. That enchanting reign, of which she had seen
but the conclusion, had dazzled her eyes, and the mere tone in which she
pronounced the titles of that time evoked the memory of epaulettes and
gold lace