“She is close to you now,” said Agatha, sitting down on a low stool at the old woman’s feet.  “I told you her name a while since.  It is I who loved your son:  I, Agatha Larochejaquelin.”

Francoise Cathelineau dropped from her hand the flax, which she had hitherto employed herself in preparing for the wheel, and pushing from her forehead her loose grey locks, and resting on her knees her two elbows, she gazed long and intently into Agatha’s face.

“It is just the face he would have loved,” said she aloud, yet speaking to herself.  “Yes, it is the face of which he used to dream and talk—­pale and sad, but very fair:  and though I used to bid him mind his work, and bring down his heart to love some poor honest labouring girl, I did not the less often think over his strange fancies.  And Jacques told you that he loved you, did he, Mademoiselle?  I wonder at that—­I wonder at that; it would have been more like himself to have carried his love a secret to the grave.”

“He was dying when he told me that he regarded me above other women; and I am prouder of the dying hero’s love, than I could have been had a Prince knelt at my feet.”

“He was dying when he confessed his love!  Yes, I understand it now:  death will open the lips and bring forth the truth, when the dearest hopes of life, when the sharpest pang of the heart fail to do so.  Had he not been sure that life with him was gone, he never would have spoken of his love.  He was a weak, foolish man.  Very weak in spite of all his courage; very weak and very foolish—­very weak and very foolish.”

She was talking more to herself than to Agatha, as she thus spoke of her son’s character, and for a minute or two she continued in the same strain, speaking of him in a way that showed that every little action, every wish of his, had been to her a subject of thought and anxiety; and that she took a strange pride in those very qualities for which she blamed him.

“And did you come to me on purpose to tell me this, Mademoiselle?” she said after a while.

“I came to talk to you about your son, and to offer you, for his sake, the affection of a daughter.”

“And when he told you that he loved you, what answer did you make him? tell me:  did you comfort him; did you say one word to make him happy?  I know, from your face, that you had not the heart to rebuke a dying man.”

“Rebuke him!  How could I have rebuked him? though I had never owned it to myself I now feel that I had loved him before he had ever spoken to me of love.”

“But what did you say to him? tell me what you said to him.  He was my own son, my only son.  He was stubborn, and self-willed, but still he was my son; and his words were sweeter to me than music, and his face was brighter to me than the light of heaven.  If you made him happy before he died, I will kneel down and worship you,” and joining her skinny hands together, she laid them upon Agatha’s knees.  “Come, sweetest, tell me what answer you made my poor boy when he told you that he loved you.”