CHAPTER XVI.

"No tear relieved the burden of her heart;

Stunn'd with the heavy woe."

-Thalaba.

THE days went on for Thérèse very much as they had done at the hospital. She had but one patient instead of many, it is true, but that one absorbed all her care. Octavie had been sent from the house; the fille, who was in the habit of coming for a certain number of hours daily, took fright and kept away. Nannon took her place, but she was not permitted to enter the sickroom, and madame, besides that she had the office on her hands, was utterly incapable of those little feminine cares which nursing demands. So everything rested upon Thérèse, and even during those intervals when the child was unconscious there seemed to be an increase of disquietude if she were not close at hand. She thought it a bad case, and longed for M. Deshouliéres' swift perception to be brought to bear upon it, and she could not help remembering Nannon's irreverent simile when little Pinot came into the room, with his little attempt at imitation of the other's manner. But madame broke into violent

opposition when she ventured to suggest that M. Deshouliéres should be sent for. And so there was nothing for it but to remember his injunctions, and patiently to do what was needed for the poor little man, whose naughtinesses and obstinacies were forgotten now, or recalled only with shame at her own want of forbearance.

She wondered sometimes at madame's strange ways. It was impossible to say in what mood the next hour would find her, fierce or remorseful, snappish or affectionate. Thérèse would have understood the changes of temperature better had she known what coals of fire her own unconscious hands were heaping and shovelling upon madame's head just then. Nothing could have been so terrible to her as to see this girl whom she had injured sitting with the little hot hand in hers which the mother loved above all others in the world, and longed to tear away out of her clasp. Nothing. It almost maddened her.

At last one morning M. Pinot also told her that he would suggest her sending for M. Deshouliéres. “If only as a measure of satisfaction to himself," he said. Thérèse, who understood well enough what those words meant, turned a little pale, and looked tenderly down upon the little ugly brown face, now so pinched and wizened and changed, which kept slipping down from the pillow.

"I say as I said before, M. Deshouliéres shall not

come," answered madame, in her strange defiant tone. "The child is no worse."

"Pardon, madame. It grieves me to state

"He is not worse, I tell you. The fever must run its course, and I have heard you say it is now only weakness."

"Madame, at this stage"

"He is not worse, I repeat again. And I do not choose that M. Deshouliéres should come."

"In that case

Is Monsieur Roulleau aware of

the extent of his son's illness, may I venture to inquire of madame?"

"My husband comes to-day."

"How has she brought him?" thought Thérèse, in wonderment, for she knew something of the force of the little notary's fears. She had brought him simply by not telling him of the illness at all. There was a good deal of business waiting for him, and she had told him peremptorily that after it had rained she should demand his return. In her next letter she said that it had rained, that the fever was diminishing, and that on such a day he was to be at Rue St. Servan, without fail. That was all. Nannon, who admitted him, wondered as much as any one at his arrival. Madame on hearing that he was there came slowly down the stairs, and without a word, signed to him to enter the little bureau.

"Zénobie, my angel," he said, turning to meet her as

she followed him. Something, it might have been a grey look on her face, arrested him, "Zénobie, what is the matter?" he said faltering.

She was a woman, after all-wicked, cruel, but yet a woman. Her sin was smiting her sorely; there were those terrible coals of fire scorching, consuming her. And he was her husband, the father of her children. "Oh, Ignace, Ignace, mon ami," she cried piteously, stretching out her arms for support, "our little Adolphe !"

"The fever!" he cried, springing back with one bound against the wall. "The fever is in this house, and you let me come?"

She would be patient yet. It was the first shock. He had not realised her words.

"He will not know you, Ignace; he is changed, and so weak; it is terrible to see him."

"Keep back!" he cried out, for she was drawing closer; "keep back! You have been nursing him, and now you speak to me! Let me go out into the air.

Zénobie, how could you be so imprudent?"

"You will not see him-your son?"

"What is the good, what is the good? I can do nothing to help him. See here, what a palpitation you

have given me with your news.

Let me pass! I will go back to Tours at once. Let me pass! I shall be a dead man if I stay in the house with the fever."

Her wrath blazed out at last.

"Coward!" she said, standing between him and the door, and holding him immovable with a look of supreme scorn. "Coward! Have you sunk to such a depth of meanness that you can think of nothing but your own wretched existence? And while you stand there trembling, shaking, do you know who it is that is there by his side, nursing and tending him until I am driven mad? That girl. Do you know that, while I hate her with all my soul, it is all I can do sometimes not to fall down on my knees before her and tell her everything? Do you know that he cares for her more than for me,— me, his mother?"

"Zénobie, Zénobie, have patience! You will not hear reason. You will ruin us with your impetuosity." "Listen, then. You who have not so much as the bravery of a woman in your miserable little heart—it is your child whom that girl is nursing night and day. You have no courage, I know too well-have you no pity either? Do you, remembering who she is, and what she is doing,-do you refuse to let her know that this man, her lover, is alive-that you could actually lay your hand upon him, and bring him back to her? Do you refuse that? She may die, remember, die of nursing your child!"