mother was watching her, at once made a marked
display of amiability, profiting by the license which charitable fervour
authorised, to slip a variety of little articles into the young man's
pockets, and then place others in his hands, which she pressed within her
own, showing the while all the sparkle of youth, indulging in fresh,
merry laughter, which fairly tortured her rival.

So extreme was Eve's suffering, that she wished to intervene and part
them. But it so chanced that Pierre barred her way, for he wished to
submit an idea to her before leaving the bazaar. "Madame," said he,
"since that man Laveuve is dead, and you have taken so much trouble with
regard to the bed which you now have vacant, will you be so good as to
keep it vacant until I have seen our venerable friend, Abbe Rose? I am to
see him this evening, and he knows so many cases of want, and would be so
glad to relieve one of them, and bring you some poor _protege_ of his."

"Yes, certainly," stammered the Baroness, "I shall be very happy,--I will
wait a little, as you desire,--of course, of course, Monsieur l'Abbe."

She was trembling all over; she no longer knew what she was saying; and,
unable to conquer her passion, she turned aside from the priest, unaware
even that he was still there, when Gerard, yielding to the dolorous
entreaty of her eyes, at last managed to escape from Camille and join
her.

"What a stranger you are becoming, my friend!" she said aloud, with a
forced smile. "One never sees you now."

"Why, I have been poorly," he replied, in his amiable way. "Yes, I assure
you I have been ailing a little."

He, ailing! She looked at him with maternal anxiety, quite upset. And,
indeed, however proud and lofty his figure, his handsome regular face did
seem to her paler than usual. It was as if the nobility of the facade
had, in some degree, ceased to hide the irreparable dilapidation within.
And given his real good nature, it must be true that he
suffered--suffered by reason of his useless, wasted life, by reason of
all the money he cost his impoverished mother, and of the needs that were
at last driving him to marry that wealthy deformed girl, whom at first he
had simply pitied. And so weak did he seem to Eve, so like a piece of
wreckage tossed hither and thither by a tempest, that, at the risk of
being overheard by the throng, she let her heart flow forth in a low but
ardent, entreating murmur: "If you suffer, ah! what sufferings are
mi