the trouble to look at herself in
the glass, or to see how her maid had dressed her. Yet she looked
beautiful--coldly, palely beautiful--in that floating dress of deep
blue; and jewelled forget-me-nots in her rich amber hair. Her face and
figure had recovered all their lost roundness and symmetry, but the
former, except when she spoke or smiled, was as cold and still as
marble.

Father Francis and Doctor Danton were in the dining-room when she
entered, but their welcome home was very apathetically met. She was
silent all through dinner, talking was such a tiresome exertion; nothing
interested her. She hardly looked up--she could feel, somehow, the young
priest's deep, clear eyes bent upon her in grave disapproval, against
which her proud spirit mutinied.

"Why should I take the trouble to talk?" she thought; "What do I care
for Doctor Danton or his sister, or what interest have the things they
talk of for me?"

So she listened as if they had been talking Greek. Only once was she
aroused to anything like interest. Their two guests were relating the
progress of that virulent fever in the village, and how many had already
been carried off.

"I should think the cold weather would give it a check," said her
father.

"It seems rather on the increase," replied the priest; "there are ten
cases in St. Croix now."

"We heard the bell as we drove up this afternoon," said the Captain;
"for whom was it tolling?"

"For poor old Pierre, the sexton. He took the fever only a week ago, and
was delirious nearly all the time."

Kate lifted her eyes, hitherto listening, but otherwise meaningless.

"Pierre, who used to light the fires and sweep the church?"

"Yes; you knew him," said Father Francis looking at her; "he talked of
you more than once during his delirium. It seems you sang for him once,
and he never forgot it. It dwelt in his mind more than anything else,
during that last illness."

A pang pierced Kate's heart. She remembered the day when she had strayed
into the church with Reginald, and found old Pierre sweeping. He had
made his request so humbly and earnestly, that she had sat down at the
little harmonium and played and sung a hymn. And he had never forgotten
it; he had talked of it in his dying hours. The sharpest remorse she had
ever felt in her life, for the good she might have done, she felt then.

"My poor people have missed their Lady Bountiful," continued Father
Francis, with that grave smile of his--"m