Shall
I die?"

"I think not, mademoiselle. I believe not, but you may be ill for a
while."

"Ill! For how long?"

"That I cannot tell you. You must have care and quiet, absolute quiet."

Pauline said no more. The distress of heart and nerves came on again;
she moaned, being exceedingly troubled in spirit and her pallor was
great.

"It is clear you must not remain out in the road any longer,
mademoiselle. You must be put to bed and have warmth and rest and some
kind woman to look after you. Ah! How we would welcome our good Mme.
Poussette now, but she has flown, she has flown. So it will be Mme.
Archambault perhaps, who knows all about sickness; has she not reared
thirteen of her own, or fourteen, I forget which? Come, mademoiselle,
we will lift you carefully. The door is open, the manor is hospitable
and warm, its kitchen and larder well stocked, its cellars overflowing.
Faith--you might do worse, and at Poussette's who would be there to
nurse you?"

Pauline was too spent to utter the defiant objections that in health
she would have hurled at the speaker. Tragedy indeed had touched her
for once too deeply, and she submitted to be helped back into her old
home, the house made hateful by a thousand painful associations of an
unhappy youth, without uttering a single remonstrance. Some of her
native courage knocked timidly at her frightened heart, clamouring to
be reassured of days to come, of duties to be taken up, of life to be
lived, for over and above her sense of cruel frustration and
bereavement she dreaded death, not caring to die. The closing of the
episode in which the guide figured so prominently appalled and
stupefied her, yet her inherent vitality sprang up, already trying to
assert itself.

"What a position is mine!" she thought, when a slight return of
strength enabled her, leaning on the doctor's arm, to reach the room so
long occupied by her brother. But her lips said nothing. There was no
other place to put her; the salon did not contain a sofa, she could not
be lodged with Artemise or Angeel, and meanwhile her weakness increased
till she asked herself to be put to bed. Maman Archambault was sent
for and in a few moments Pauline was lying on the lumpy tattered
mattress which had served Henry Clairville for his last couch.

The course of tragic accident had brought her to this, and could she
have foreseen the long, long weary time, first of illness, then of
convalescence, and fin