“Antoinette!” exclaimed the Vicomtesse, going to her.

The girl did not answer at once.  Her suffering seemed to have brought upon her a certain acceptance of misfortune as inevitable.  Her face, framed in the black veil, was never more beautiful than on that night.

“What is the Alcalde doing here?” she said.

The officer himself answered the question.

“I am leaving, Mademoiselle,” said he.  He reached out his hands toward her, appealingly.  “Do you not remember me, Mademoiselle?  You brought the good sister to see my wife.”

“I remember you,” said Antoinette.

“Do not stay here, Mademoiselle!” he cried.  “There is—­there is yellow fever.”

“So that is it,” said Antoinette, unheeding him and looking at her cousin.  “She has yellow fever, then?”

“I beg you to come away, Mademoiselle!” the man entreated.

“Please go,” she said to him.  He looked at her, and went out silently, closing the doors after him.  “Why was he here?” she asked again.

“He came to get Mr. Temple, my dear,” said the Vicomtesse.  The girl’s lips framed his name, but did not speak it.

“Where is he?” she asked slowly.

The Vicomtesse pointed towards the bedroom.

“In there,” she answered, “with his mother.”

“He came to her?” Antoinette asked quite simply.

The Vicomtesse glanced at me, and drew the veil gently from the girl’s shoulders.  She led her, unresisting, to a chair.  I looked at them.  The difference in their ages was not so great.  Both had suffered cruelly; one had seen the world, the other had not, and yet the contrast lay not here.  Both had followed the gospel of helpfulness to others, but one as a religieuse, innocent of the sin around her, though poignant of the sorrow it caused.  The other, knowing evil with an insight that went far beyond intuition, fought with that, too.

“I will tell you, Antoinette,” began the Vicomtesse; “it was as you said.  Mr. Ritchie and I found him at Lamarque’s.  He had not taken your money; he did not even know that Auguste had gone to see you.  He did not even know,” she said, bending over the girl, “that he was on your father’s plantation.  When we told him that, he would have left it at once.”

“Yes,” she said.

“He did not know that his mother was still in New Orleans.  And when we told him how ill she was he would have come to her then.  It was as much as we could do to persuade him to wait until we had seen Monsieur de Carondelet.  Mr. Ritchie and I came directly to town and saw his Excellency.”

It was characteristic of the Vicomtesse that she told this almost with a man’s brevity, that she omitted the stress and trouble and pain of it all.  These things were done; the tact and skill and character of her who had accomplished them were not spoken of.  The girl listened immovable, her lips parted and her eyes far away.  Suddenly, with an awakening, she turned to Helene.