Paris with its seductions netted the good doctor, and held him two or three months; would have detained him longer, but for alarming accounts the baroness sent of Josephine’s health.  These determined him to return to Beaurepaire; and, must I own it, the announcement was no longer hailed at Beaurepaire with universal joy as heretofore.

Josephine Raynal, late Dujardin, is by this time no stranger to my intelligent reader.  I wish him to bring his knowledge of her character and her sensibility to my aid.  Imagine, as the weary hours and days and weeks roll over her head, what this loving woman feels for her lover whom she has dismissed; what this grateful wife feels for the benefactor she has unwittingly wronged; but will never wrong with her eyes open; what this lady pure as snow, and proud as fire, feels at the seeming frailty into which a cruel combination of circumstances has entrapped her.

Put down the book a moment:  shut your eyes:  and imagine this strange and complicated form of human suffering.

Her mental sufferings were terrible; and for some time Rose feared for her reason.  At last her agonies subsided into a listlessness and apathy little less alarming.  She seemed a creature descending inch by inch into the tomb.  Indeed, I fully believe she would have died of despair:  but one of nature’s greatest forces stepped into the arena and fought on the side of life.  She was affected with certain bilious symptoms that added to Rose’s uneasiness, but Jacintha assured her it was nothing, and would retire and leave the sufferer better.  Jacintha, indeed, seemed now to take a particular interest in Josephine, and was always about her with looks of pity and interest.

“Good creature!” thought Rose, “she sees my sister is unhappy:  and that makes her more attentive and devoted to her than ever.”

One day these three were together in Josephine’s room.  Josephine was mechanically combing her long hair, when all of a sudden she stretched out her hand and cried, “Rose!”

Rose ran to her, and coming behind her saw in the glass that her lips were colorless.  She screamed to Jacintha, and between them they supported Josephine to the bed.  She had hardly touched it when she fainted dead away.  “Mamma! mamma!” cried Rose in her terror.

“Hush!” cried Jacintha roughly, “hold your tongue:  it is only a faint.  Help me loosen her:  don’t make any noise, whatever.”  They loosened her stays, and applied the usual remedies, but it was some time before she came-to.  At last the color came back to her lips, then to her cheek, and the light to her eye.  She smiled feebly on Jacintha and Rose, and asked if she had not been insensible.

“Yes, love, and frightened us—­a little—­not much—­oh, dear! oh, dear!”

“Don’t be alarmed, sweet one, I am better.  And I will never do it again, since it frightens you.”  Then Josephine said to her sister in a low voice, and in the Italian language, “I hoped it was death, my sister; but he comes not to the wretched.”