er by Brigaut, followed by a sort of phantom.

At this moment Sylvie's eyes chanced to fall on Pierrette's corset, and
she remembered the papers. Releasing the girl's wrist she sprang upon
the corset like a tiger on its prey, and showed it to Pierrette with a
smile,--the smile of an Iroquois over his victim before he scalps him.

"I am dying," said Pierrette, falling on her knees, "oh, who will save
me?"

"I!" said a woman with white hair and an aged parchment face, in which
two gray eyes glittered.

"Ah! grandmother, you have come too late," cried the poor child,
bursting into tears.

Pierrette fell upon her bed, her strength all gone, half-dead with the
exhaustion which, in her feeble state, followed so violent a struggle.
The tall gray woman took her in her arms, as a nurse lifts a child, and
went out, followed by Brigaut, without a word to Sylvie, on whom she
cast one glance of majestic accusation.

The apparition of that august old woman, in her Breton costume, shrouded
in her coif (a sort of hooded mantle of black cloth), accompanied by
Brigaut, appalled Sylvie; she fancied she saw death. She slowly went
down the stairs, listened to the front door closing behind them, and
came face to face with her brother, who exclaimed: "Then they haven't
killed you?"

"Go to bed," said Sylvie. "To-morrow we will see what we must do."

She went back to her own bed, ripped open the corset, and read Brigaut's
two letters, which confounded her. She went to sleep in the greatest
perplexity,--not imagining the terrible results to which her conduct was
to lead.

* * * * *

The letters sent by Brigaut to old Madame Lorrain reached her in a
moment of ineffable joy, which the perusal of them troubled. The poor
old woman had grieved deeply in living without her Pierrette beside her,
but she had consoled her loneliness with the thought that the sacrifice
of herself was in the interests of her grandchild. She was blessed with
one of those ever-young hearts which are upheld and invigorated by
the idea of sacrifice. Her old husband, whose only joy was his little
granddaughter, had grieved for Pierrette; every day he had seemed to
look for her. It was an old man's grief,--on which such old men live, of
which they die.

Every one can now imagine the happiness which this poor old woman,
living in a sort of almshouse, felt when she learned of a generous
action, rare indeed but not impossible in France.