“Dry your eyes, Josephine,” said Camille with a deep sigh.  “They are all out on the Pleasaunce.”

“No, I will not dry my eyes,” cried Josephine, almost violently.  “I care for nothing now.”

The baroness, the doctor, and Rose, were all in the Pleasaunce:  and as the pair came in, lo! every eye was bent on Josephine.

She felt this, and her eyes sought the ground:  benumbed as she was with despondency, she began now to dread some fresh stroke or other.

Camille felt doubly guilty and confused.  How they all look at us, he thought.  Do they know what a villain I have been?  He determined to slip away, and pack up, and begone.  However, nobody took any notice of him.  The baroness drew Josephine apart.  And Rose followed her mother and sister with eyes bent on the ground.

There was a strange solemnity about them all.

Aubertin remained behind.  But even he took no notice of Camille, but walked up and down with his hands behind him, and a sad and troubled face.  Camille felt his utter desolation.  He was nothing to any of them.  He resolved to go at once, and charge Aubertin with his last adieus to the family.  It was a wise and manly resolve.  He stopped Aubertin in the middle of his walk, and said in a faint voice of the deepest dejection,—­

“Doctor, the time is come that I must once more thank you for all your goodness to me, and bid you all farewell.”

“What, going before your strength is re-established?” said the doctor politely, but not warmly.

“I am out of all danger, thanks to your skill.”

“Colonel, at another time I should insist upon your staying a day or two longer; but now I think it would be unadvisable to press you to stay.  Ah, colonel, you came to a happy house, but you leave a sad one.  Poor Madame Raynal!”

“Sir!”

“You saw the baroness draw her aside.”

“Y-yes.”

“By this time she knows it.”

“In Heaven’s name what do you mean?” asked Camille.

“I forgot; you are not aware of the calamity that has fallen upon our beloved Josephine; on the darling of the house.”

Camille turned cold with vague apprehension.  But he contrived to stammer out, “No; tell me! for Heaven’s sake tell me.”

The doctor thus pressed revealed all in a very few words.  “My poor friend,” said he solemnly, “her husband—­is dead.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, and tried to break to her the sad news:  but her own grief overcame her, and bursting into tears she bewailed the loss of her son.  Josephine was greatly shocked.  Death!—­Raynal dead—­her true, kind friend dead—­her benefactor dead.  She clung to her mother’s neck, and sobbed with her.  Presently she withdrew her face and suddenly hid it in both her hands.

She rose and kissed her mother once more:  and went to her own room:  and then, though there was none to see her, she hid her wet, but burning, cheeks in her hands.