rom her peep hole.

She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she saw: what she did tell
her agitated her so terribly: and often Rose had it on the tip of her
tongue to say, "Do pray go and see if you can say nothing that will
do him good;" but she fought the impulse down. This battle of feeling,
though less severe than her sister's, was constant; it destroyed her
gayety. She, whose merry laugh used to ring like chimes through the
house, never laughed now, seldom smiled, and often sighed.

Dr. Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep depression, but his
time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the
rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the
baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to
ask their advice.

"It is humiliating," said he, "after all my experience, to be obliged to
consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO
WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and
untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your sex
in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that
we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that
plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why."

Josephine admitted as much very frankly.

"There you see," said the doctor. "Well, then, you must help me in this
case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect."

"And pray who is it she is to read now?" asked the baroness.

"Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a
patient so faint-hearted."

"A soldier faint-hearted!" exclaimed the baroness. "To be sure these men
that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so
much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie
quiet and suffer."

The doctor walked the room in great excitement. "It is not his wound
that is killing him, there's something on his mind. You, Josephine,
with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity's sake, throw off that
sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man's fate."

"She has not," cried the baroness, firing up. "Did I not see her lining
his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do
you not?"

"Yes, mother." She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would
cure the patient, and time alone.

"Time! you speak as if time wa