ll those yellow-faced women pass before you, and
when the yellowest of all came, to have to say, `Can this be my poor
Euphrosyne!'"

Monsieur Revel could not help laughing as he looked up at the girl
through his spectacles. He pinched her cheek, and said that there was
certainly more colour there than was common in the West Indies; but that
it must fade, in or out of the convent, by the time she was twenty; and
she had better be in a place where she was safe. The convent was the
only safe place.

"You have often said that before," replied she, "and the time has never
come yet. And no more it will now. I shall go with Afra to the
cacao-gathering at Le Zephyr, as I did last year. Oh, that sweet cool
place in the Mornes du Chaos! How different from this great ugly square
white convent, with nothing that looks cheerful, and nothing to be heard
but teaching, teaching, and religion, religion, for ever."

"I advise you to make friends among the sisters, however, Euphrosyne;
for there you will spend the next few years."

"I will not make friends with anything but the poor mocking-bird. I
have promised Afra not to love anybody instead of her; but she will not
be jealous of the poor bird. It and I will spend the whole day in the
thicket, mocking and pining--pining and mocking. The sisters shall not
get a word out of me--not one of them. I may speak to old Raphael now
and then, that I may not forget how to use my tongue; but I vow that
poor bird shall be my only friend."

"We shall see that. We shall see how long a giddy child like you can
keep her mocking-bird tone in the uproar that is coming upon us! What
will you do, child, without me, when the people of this colony are
cutting one another's throats over my grave? What will become of you
when I am gone?"

"Dear grandpapa, before that comes the question, What will you do
without me? What will become of you when I am gone into that dull
place? You know very well, grandpapa, that you cannot spare me."

The old man's frame was shaken with sobs. He put his thin hands before
his face, and the tears trickled between his fingers. Euphrosyne
caressed him, saying, "There! I knew how it would be. I knew I should
never leave you. I never will leave you. I will bring up your coffee
every morning, and light your lamp every night, as long as you live."

As she happened to be looking towards the door, she saw it opening a
little upon its noiseless hinges, and a h