ring
gardens. The meadows were empty, the breeze wrinkled the stream,
at the bottom of which were long grasses that looked like the hair
of corpses floating in the water. She restrained her sorrow and
was very brave until night; but, when she had gone to her own
room, she gave way to it, burying her face in the pillow and
pressing her two fists against her temples.

A long while afterward, she learned through Victor's captain, the
circumstances which surrounded his death. At the hospital they had
bled him too much, treating him for yellow fever. Four doctors
held him at one time. He died almost instantly, and the chief
surgeon had said:

"Here goes another one!"

His parents had always treated him barbarously; she preferred not
to see them again, and they made no advances, either from
forgetfulness or out of innate hardness.

Virginia was growing weaker.

A cough, continual fever, oppressive breathing and spots on her
cheeks indicated some serious trouble. Monsieur Poupart had
advised a sojourn in Provence. Madame Aubain decided that they
would go, and she would have had her daughter come home at once,
had it not been for the climate of Pont-l'Eveque.

She made an arrangement with a livery-stable man who drove her
over to the convent every Tuesday. In the garden there was a
terrace, from which the view extends to the Seine. Virginia walked
in it, leaning on her mother's arm and treading the dead vine
leaves. Sometimes the sun, shining through the clouds, made her
blink her lids, when she gazed at the sails in the distance, and
let her eyes roam over the horizon from the chateau of Tancarville
to the lighthouses of Havre. Then they rested in the arbour. Her
mother had bought a little cask of fine Malaga wine, and Virginia,
laughing at the idea of becoming intoxicated, would drink a few
drops of it, but never more.

Her strength returned. Autumn passed. Felicite began to reassure
Madame Aubain. But, one evening, when she returned home after an
errand, she met M. Boupart's coach in front of the door; M.
Boupart himself was standing in the vestibule and Madame Aubain
was tying the strings of her bonnet. "Give me my foot-warmer, my
purse and my gloves; and be quick about it," she said.

Virginia had congestion of the lungs; perhaps it was desperate.

"Not yet," said the physician, and both got into the carriage,
while the snow fell in thick flakes. It was almost night and very
cold.

Felicite rushed to the ch