She was silent and lay back, gasping for breath, still plucking at the sheets with her fingers.

Suzanne had hidden her face in her hands and did not move.  She was thinking of him whom she had loved so long.  What a life of happiness they might have had together!  She saw him again in the dim and distant past-that past forever lost.  Beloved dead! how the thought of them rends the heart!  Oh! that kiss, his only kiss!  She had retained the memory of it in her soul.  And, after that, nothing, nothing more throughout her whole existence!

The priest rose suddenly and in a firm, compelling voice said: 

“Mademoiselle Suzanne, your sister is dying!”

Then Suzanne, raising her tear-stained face, put her arms round her sister, and kissing her fervently, exclaimed: 

“I forgive you, I forgive you, little one!”

COCO

Throughout the whole countryside the Lucas farn, was known as “the Manor.”  No one knew why.  The peasants doubtless attached to this word, “Manor,” a meaning of wealth and of splendor, for this farm was undoubtedly the largest, richest and the best managed in the whole neighborhood.

The immense court, surrounded by five rows of magnificent trees, which sheltered the delicate apple trees from the harsh wind of the plain, inclosed in its confines long brick buildings used for storing fodder and grain, beautiful stables built of hard stone and made to accommodate thirty horses, and a red brick residence which looked like a little chateau.

Thanks for the good care taken, the manure heaps were as little offensive as such things can be; the watch-dogs lived in kennels, and countless poultry paraded through the tall grass.

Every day, at noon, fifteen persons, masters, farmhands and the women folks, seated themselves around the long kitchen table where the soup was brought in steaming in a large, blue-flowered bowl.

The beasts-horses, cows, pigs and sheep-were fat, well fed and clean.  Maitre Lucas, a tall man who was getting stout, would go round three times a day, overseeing everything and thinking of everything.

A very old white horse, which the mistress wished to keep until its natural death, because she had brought it up and had always used it, and also because it recalled many happy memories, was housed, through sheer kindness of heart, at the end of the stable.

A young scamp about fifteen years old, Isidore Duval by name, and called, for convenience, Zidore, took care of this pensioner, gave him his measure of oats and fodder in winter, and in summer was supposed to change his pasturing place four times a day, so that he might have plenty of fresh grass.

The animal, almost crippled, lifted with difficulty his legs, large at the knees and swollen above the hoofs.  His coat, which was no longer curried, looked like white hair, and his long eyelashes gave to his eyes a sad expression.