ost wonderful stories which the old man told her about his
doings during the emigration--before he married Madame la Comtesse--when
he gave lessons in dancing, parbleu! There was his fiddle still, a
trophy of those old times. He chirped, and coughed, and sang, in his
cracked old voice, as he talked about them. "Lor! bless you, mum," says
Betsy, "he must have been a terrible old man!" He remembered the times
well enough, but the stories he sometimes told over twice or thrice in
an hour. I am afraid he had not repented sufficiently of those wicked
old times: else why did he laugh and giggle so when he recalled them? He
would laugh and giggle till he was choked with his old cough: and old
S. Jean, his man, came and beat M. le Comte on the back, and made M. le
Comte take a spoonful of his syrup.

Between two such women as Madame de Florac and Lady Kew, of course there
could be little liking or sympathy. Religion, love, duty, the family,
were the French lady's constant occupation,--duty and the family,
perhaps, Lady Kew's aim too,--only the notions of duty were different
in either person. Lady Kew's idea of duty to her relatives being to push
them on in the world: Madame de Florac's to soothe, to pray, to attend
them with constant watchfulness, to strive to mend them with pious
counsel. I don't know that one lady was happier than the other. Madame
de Florac's eldest son was a kindly prodigal: her second had given his
whole heart to the Church: her daughter had centred hers on her own
children, and was jealous if their grandmother laid a finger on them.
So Leonore de Florac was quite alone. It seemed as if Heaven had turned
away all her children's hearts from her. Her daily business in life was
to nurse a selfish old man, into whose service she had been forced in
early youth, by a paternal decree which she never questioned; giving
him obedience, striving to give him respect,--everything but her heart,
which had gone out of her keeping. Many a good woman's life is no more
cheerful; a spring of beauty, a little warmth and sunshine of love, a
bitter disappointment, followed by pangs and frantic tears, then a long
monotonous story of submission. "Not here, my daughter, is to be your
happiness," says the priest; "whom Heaven loves it afflicts." And he
points out to her the agonies of suffering saints of her sex; assures
her of their present beatitudes and glories; exhorts her to bear her
pains with a faith like theirs; and is empow