“Is it little Jacques’s medicine?”

“Quite similar, my dear,—­not the powders,—­the liquid.  Equally soothing to the nerves, and promotive of sleep.”

She turned her face away.  She had slept long enough.  She thanked Monsieur, not daring to look up, but capriciously refused to touch little Jacques’s medicine.

“And Monsieur,” she said, “Monsieur was very angry.  He said I was a disobedient wife, who did not wish to get well, but desired to be a constant expense and trouble to her husband.

“And so, Christine C——­, I trembled and shook, and let fall words I never meant to have uttered to Monsieur, and I said he had killed the child, and wished to kill me, that he might marry Mademoiselle Christine.  I did not say any more that day.  In the morning, Monsieur and I discoursed together again.  I declared I would get well and go away.  Oh!  Monsieur knew well I would not betray him.  He was willing, very willing to consent to my departure.  He cared for me well, and gave me much money; and I went away to my old aunt, who lived in Paris.  I have been dead,—­I have died to Monsieur.  I should never have returned, but that my good aunt is gone.  When I buried her,—­shut her kind eyes, and wrapped her so snugly in her shroud,—­I thought it a horrible thing to be living without a soul to care for me, or comfort me, or even to wrap me up as I did her when the time was come.  I felt then a thirsty spirit rising within me to see my old place where I had comfort and shelter long ago, and to see my children.  I have been to see them:  they are in B——­; they did not know me there.  I did not tell them who I was.  I have been faithful to my promise.  I tell no one but you, Christine C——­, who have stepped into my place, and stolen away my home.  A prettier home you have made of it for a prettier wife; but it’s the old place yet, with the old stain upon it.”

Wishing to consider a moment what I should do, half paralyzed, like one who is stricken with death, I left that other ME, (for was she not also my husband’s wife?) apparently exhausted, lying upon the sofa, and went wearily up-stairs, with heavy steps, like one whose life has suddenly become a weight to him.  What, indeed, should I do?  Starvation and misery stared me in the face.  If I left the house, casting its guilt and its comfort behind me, where could I go?  I could do nothing, earn nothing now.  My reputation, now that we were so lone established, would be entirely gone.  And if I left all for which I had labored so hard, for another to enjoy, would that better the matter?  Great God! would anything help me?  Before me in terrific vision rose a dim vista of future ruin, of ineffectual years writhing in the inescapable power of the law, of long trial, of horrible suspense, of garish publicity, of my name handed from mouth to mouth, a forlorn, duped, degraded thing, whose blighted life was a theme of newspaper comment and cavil.  These