lump.

"If so, tell me why is it that ever since that black day when the news
of his DEATH reached us, the whole house has gone into black, and has
gone out of mourning?"

"Mamma," stammered Rose, "what DO you mean?"

"Even poor Camille, who was so pale and wan, has recovered like magic."

"O mamma! is not that fancy?" said Rose, piteously. "Of what do you
suspect me? Can you think I am unfeeling--ungrateful? I should not be
YOUR daughter."

"No, no," said the baroness, "to do you justice, you attempt sorrow;
as you put on black. But, my poor child, you do it with so little skill
that one sees a horrible gayety breaking through that thin disguise:
you are no true mourners: you are like the mutes or the undertakers at
a funeral, forced grief on the surface of your faces, and frightful
complacency below."

"Tra la! lal! la! la! Tra la! la! Tra la! la!" carolled Jacintha, in the
colonel's room hard by.

The ladies looked at one another: Rose in great confusion.

"Tra la! la! la! Tra lal! lal! la! la! la!"

"Jacintha!" screamed Rose angrily.

"Hush! not a word," said the baroness. "Why remonstrate with HER?
Servants are but chameleons: they take the color of those they serve. Do
not cry. I wanted your confidence, not your tears, love. There, I will
not twice in one day ask you for your heart: it would be to lower the
mother, and give the daughter the pain of refusing it, and the regret,
sure to come one day, of having refused it. I will discover the meaning
of it all by myself." She went away with a gentle sigh; and Rose was cut
to the heart by her words; she resolved, whatever it might cost her and
Josephine, to make a clean breast this very day. As she was one of those
who act promptly, she went instantly in search of her sister, to gain
her consent, if possible.

Now, the said Josephine was in the garden walking with Camille, and
uttering a wife's tender solicitudes.

"And must you leave me? must you risk your life again so soon; the life
on which mine depends?"

"My dear, that letter I received from headquarters two days ago, that
inquiry whether my wound was cured. A hint, Josephine--a hint too broad
for any soldier not to take."

"Camille, you are very proud," said Josephine, with an accent of
reproach, and a look of approval.

"I am obliged to be. I am the husband of the proudest woman in France."

"Hush! not so loud: there is Dard on the grass."

"Dard!" muttered the soldier with a word of mean