“Lisieux is a little town in Normandy,” she said.  “I was there a few days with your father, one summer, long ago.  It’s a country full of old stories, folklore, and traditions; and the people still believe in the Old Scratch pretty literally.  This legend was of the time when he came to Lisieux.  The people knew he was coming because a wise woman had said that he was on the way, and predicted that he would arrive at the time of the great fair.  Everybody was in great distress, because they knew that whoever looked at him would become bewitched, but, of course, they had to go to the fair.  The wise woman was able to give them a little comfort; she said some one was coming with the devil, and that the people must not notice the devil, but keep their eyes fastened on this other—­then they would be free of the fiend’s influence.  But, when the devil arrived at the fair, nobody even looked to see who his companion was, for the devil was so picturesque, so vivid, all in flaming scarlet and orange, and he capered and danced and sang so that nobody could help looking at him—­and, after looking once, they couldn’t look away until they were thoroughly under his spell.  So they were all bewitched, and began to scream and howl and roll on the ground, and turn on each other and brawl, and `commit all manner of excesses.’  Then the wise woman was able to exorcise the devil, and he sank into the ground; but his companion stayed, and the people came to their senses, and looked, and they saw that it was an angel.  The angel had been there all the time that the fiend was, of course.  So they have a saying now, that there may be angels with us, but we don’t notice them when the devil’s about.”

She did not look at her son as she finished, and she had hurried through the latter part of her “legend” with increasing timidity.  The parallel was more severe, now that she put it to him, than she intended; it sounded savage; and she feared she had overshot her mark.  Laura, of course, was the other, the companion; she had been actually a companion for the vivid sister, everywhere with her at the fair, and never considered:  now she emerged from her overshadowed obscurity, and people were able to see her as an individual—­heretofore she had been merely the retinue of a flaming Cora.  But the “legend” was not very gallant to Cora!

Mrs. Lindley knew that it hurt her son; she felt it without looking at him, and before he gave a sign.  As it was, he did not speak, but, after a few moments, rose and went quietly out of the room:  then she heard the front door open and close.  She sat by his fire a long, long time and was sorry—­and wondered.

When Richard came home from his cold night-prowl in the snowy streets, he found a sheet of note paper upon his pillow: 

“Dearest Richard, I didn’t mean that anybody you ever cared for was a d—–­l.  I only meant that often the world finds out that there are lovely people it hasn’t noticed.”