Sylvie gazed around her vaguely,—­the letter of her dead admirer grasped in her hand,—­and his former letter, proposing marriage, lying still open on the table.  Her old gouvernante watched her anxiously, the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You are crying, Katrine!” she said, “And yet you knew him very little,—­he never loved you!  I wish—­I wish my tears would come!  But they are all here—­aching and hurting me—­“and she pressed her hand to her heart—­“You see—­when one is a woman and has been loved by a man, one cannot but feel sorry—­for such an end!  You see he was not altogether cruel!—­he defended my name—­and he has died for my sake!  For my sake!—­Oh, Katrine!  For my sake!  So he did love me—­at the last! . . . and I—­I—­Oh, Katrine!—­I wish—­I wish the tears would come!”

And as she spoke she reeled—­and uttering a little cry like that of a wounded bird, dropped senseless.

XXV.

The death of the famous actor Miraudin was a nine days’ wonder, and about a three weeks’ regret.  He had made no reputation beyond that of the clever Mime,—­he was not renowned for scholarship,—­he had made no mark in dramatic literature,—­and his memory soon sank out of sight in the whirling ocean of events as completely as though he had never existed.  There was no reality about him, and as a natural consequence he went the way of all Shams.  Had even his study of his art been sincere and high—­had he sought for the best, the greatest, and most perfect work, and represented that only to the public, the final judgment of the world might perhaps have given him a corner beside Talma or Edmund Kean,—­but the conceit of him, united to an illiterate mind, was too great for the tolerance of the universal Spirit of things which silently in the course of years pronounces the last verdict on a man’s work.  Only a few of his own profession remembered him as one who might have been great had he not been so little;—­and a few women laughed lightly, recalling the legion of his “amours”, and said, “Ce pauvre coquin, Miraudin!” That was all.  And for the mortal remains of Guy Beausire de Fontenelle, there came a lady, grave and pale, clothed in deep black, with the nun’s white band crossing her severe and tranquil brows,—­and she, placing a great wreath of violets fresh gathered from the Pamphili woods, and marked, “In sorrow, from Sylvie Hermenstein”, on the closed coffin, escorted her melancholy burden back to Paris, where in a stately marble vault, to the solemn sound of singing, and amid the flare of funeral tapers, with torn battle banners drooping around his bier, and other decaying fragments of chivalry, the last scion of the once great house of Fontenelle was laid to rest with his fathers.  Little did the austere Abbess, who was the chief mourner at these obsequies, guess that the actor Miraudin, whose grave had been hastily dug in Rome, had also a right to