."

The doctor thus pressed revealed all in a very few words. "My poor
friend," said he solemnly, "her husband--is dead."

CHAPTER XIV.

The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, and tried to break
to her the sad news: but her own grief overcame her, and bursting into
tears she bewailed the loss of her son. Josephine was greatly shocked.
Death!--Raynal dead--her true, kind friend dead--her benefactor dead.
She clung to her mother's neck, and sobbed with her. Presently she
withdrew her face and suddenly hid it in both her hands.

She rose and kissed her mother once more: and went to her own room: and
then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning,
cheeks in her hands.

Josephine confined herself for some days to her own room, leaving it
only to go to the chapel in the park, where she spent hours in prayers
for the dead and in self-humiliation. Her "tender conscience" accused
herself bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more than she
had.

Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all confused in the
doctor's face, and was silent. Then after awhile he said, "Dead? Raynal
dead?"

"Killed in action."

A red flush came to Camille's face, and his eyes went down to the ground
at his very feet, nor did he once raise them while the doctor told him
how the sad news had come. "Picard the notary brought us the Moniteur,
and there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a cavalry skirmish."
With this, he took the journal from his pocket, and Camille read it,
with awe-struck, and other feelings he would have been sorry to see
analyzed. He said not a word; and lowered his eyes to the ground.

"And now," said Aubertin, "you will excuse me. I must go to my poor
friend the baroness. She had a mother's love for him who is no more:
well she might."

Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there like a statue, his
eyes still glued to the ground at his feet.

The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille raised his eyes
furtively, like a guilty person, and looked irresolutely this way
and that: at last he turned and went back to the place where he had
meditated suicide and murder; looked down at it a long while, then
looked up to heaven--then fell suddenly on his knees: and so remained
till night-fall. Then he came back to the chateau.

He whispered to himself, "And I am afraid it is too late to go away
to-night." He went softly into the saloon. Nobody was