And she beat the hand pitilessly.

“Help! help!” cried Pierrette, the blood flowing.

At that instant, loud knocks were heard at the front door.  Exhausted, the two women paused a moment.

Rogron, awakened and uneasy, not knowing what was happening, had got up, gone to his sister’s room, and not finding her was frightened.  Hearing the knocks he went down, unfastened the front door, and was nearly knocked over by Brigaut, followed by a sort of phantom.

At this moment Sylvie’s eyes chanced to fall on Pierrette’s corset, and she remembered the papers.  Releasing the girl’s wrist she sprang upon the corset like a tiger on its prey, and showed it to Pierrette with a smile,—­the smile of an Iroquois over his victim before he scalps him.

“I am dying,” said Pierrette, falling on her knees, “oh, who will save me?”

“I!” said a woman with white hair and an aged parchment face, in which two gray eyes glittered.

“Ah! grandmother, you have come too late,” cried the poor child, bursting into tears.

Pierrette fell upon her bed, her strength all gone, half-dead with the exhaustion which, in her feeble state, followed so violent a struggle.  The tall gray woman took her in her arms, as a nurse lifts a child, and went out, followed by Brigaut, without a word to Sylvie, on whom she cast one glance of majestic accusation.

The apparition of that august old woman, in her Breton costume, shrouded in her coif (a sort of hooded mantle of black cloth), accompanied by Brigaut, appalled Sylvie; she fancied she saw death.  She slowly went down the stairs, listened to the front door closing behind them, and came face to face with her brother, who exclaimed:  “Then they haven’t killed you?”

“Go to bed,” said Sylvie.  “To-morrow we will see what we must do.”

She went back to her own bed, ripped open the corset, and read Brigaut’s two letters, which confounded her.  She went to sleep in the greatest perplexity,—­not imagining the terrible results to which her conduct was to lead.

* * * * *

The letters sent by Brigaut to old Madame Lorrain reached her in a moment of ineffable joy, which the perusal of them troubled.  The poor old woman had grieved deeply in living without her Pierrette beside her, but she had consoled her loneliness with the thought that the sacrifice of herself was in the interests of her grandchild.  She was blessed with one of those ever-young hearts which are upheld and invigorated by the idea of sacrifice.  Her old husband, whose only joy was his little granddaughter, had grieved for Pierrette; every day he had seemed to look for her.  It was an old man’s grief,—­on which such old men live, of which they die.