e, or, in the sombre drawing-room, watched
her give it light and grace and charm, and fill their hearts with the
piercing delight of her song. So her life had gone on; to the outward
world serene and happy, full of simplicity, charity, and good works.
What it was in reality no one could know, not even herself. Since
the day when Louis had tried to kill George Fournel, life had been a
different thing for them both. On her part she had been deeply hurt;
wounded beyond repair. He had failed her from every vital stand-point,
he had not fulfilled one hope she had ever had of him. But she laid the
blame not at his door; she rather shrank with inner bitterness from
the cynical cruelty of nature, which, in deforming the body, with a
merciless cruelty had deformed a noble mind. These things were between
her and her inmost soul.

To Louis she was ever the same, affectionate, gentle, and unselfish;
but her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge, commanded his
perturbed spirit into the abstracted quiet and bitter silence wherein
he lived, and which she sought to cheer by a thousand happy devices. She
did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him; no word
or act of hers could have suggested to him the sacrifices she had
made. He knew them, still he did not know them in their fulness; he was
grateful, but his gratitude did not compass the splendid self-effacing
devotion with which she denied herself the glorious career that had lain
before her. Morbid and self-centred, he could not understand. Since her
return from Quebec she had sought to give a little touch of gaiety to
their life, and she had not the heart to interfere with his constant
insistence on the little dignities of the position of Seigneur, ironical
as they all were in her eyes. She had sacrificed everything; and since
another also had sacrificed himself to give her husband the honours and
estate he possessed, the game should be delicately played to the unseen
end.

So it had gone on until the coming of the deputation with the
testimonial and the gift. She had proposed the gaieties of the occasion
to Louis with so simple a cheerfulness, that he had no idea of the
torture it meant to her; no realisation of how she would be brought face
to face with the life that she had given up for his sake. But neither
he nor she was aware of one thing, that the beautiful embossed address
contained an appeal to her to return to the world of song which she
had ren