ming up. Listen--it is you,
'Ma'amselle Clairville,' I hear them say!"

"But why be so alarmed?" cried Pauline, and she threw open the door.

Antoine Archambault and Poussette stood outside.

"Your brother the seigneur is dying, mademoiselle," said Poussette,
"and desires to see you at once. There is no time to lose."

"What is it?" asked Miss Cordova, not comprehending the foreign tongue,
and they told her.

Miss Clairville's face changed. She trembled visibly, made the sign of
the cross--so potent is habit, so strong are traditions--but uttered
nothing.

"She is ill!" said Miss Cordova, and she led her friend to a chair.

"No, no, I am not ill. But I do not want to go. _Je ne le veux pas_.
I do not wish at all to go. I will not go, Sara!"

"It's hard, I guess," said the other woman sympathetically, "but it's
natural he should want to see you before he dies. Of course, she'll
go, Mr. Poussette, and I'll go with her."

"No, no!" said Pauline, starting up, "if I go it must be alone. But
why should I go?"

She looked piteously from one to the other. "What good can I or anyone
do to him if he is dying? Perhaps there is some mistake."

Antoine spoke in voluble French in accompaniment to Poussette's
gestures, and at the words she drooped appallingly.

"Come, Pauline, perhaps it will not be so terrible after all. You were
going to visit him this week anyway."

"I know, I know, but this is different, dreadful, startling. It makes
me so--I cannot describe. Who is with him? Only Mlle. Poussette! Oh,
why--why? It will spoil my marriage, Sara; perhaps it will prevent my
marriage!"

"Nothing of the kind! No, no. You will be married the sooner, I
daresay. Where is Mr. Hawtree? Why don't he come up and talk to you?"

"He is being driven with Alexis Tremblay to the station! A train may
pass through this morning."

Pauline now recollected that he had gone to Montreal to make final
preparations for the wedding; among other things, the drawing up of an
antiquated contract according to the mixed law of the Province. A
sudden wish woke in her to run away and join him and so evade the
painful scene which must ensue if she obeyed her brother's commands.

"Death's a dreadful thing anyway, I guess," remarked Miss Cordova to
fill in the silence, touching Pauline's thick loops of hair as she
spoke. "I just know how you feel."

"_Mon Dieu_--be quiet, Sara! It isn't his death I mind so much as his
dyi