ame aware of her presence.

"Madeleine, dear, dear Madeleine! What has happened? Why do you weep
thus?"

"Do not speak to me, Bertha!" replied Madeleine in a stifled voice. "You
cannot, cannot help me; there is no hope left,--none, none! My father
has died to me again to day, and I am alone once more!--alone in a
desert that has no place of shelter for me, but a grave beneath its
swathing sands!"

Her tears gushed forth with redoubled violence.

"Do not treat me so cruelly! Do not cast me off!" pleaded Bertha, as her
cousin tried to disengage herself from her encircling arms. "If you are
wretched, so am I--_because_ you are! Only tell me the reason for this
terrible sorrow. I was awaiting you in your room; but, as you did not
come, I felt sure my cousin Maurice had detained you."

At those last words an involuntary cry of intense suffering burst from
Madeleine's lips.

"Then I saw my aunt and Maurice returning together, and Maurice appeared
to be talking in an excited manner, and my aunt looked blacker than any
thunder-cloud. Still you did not come, and I went in search of you. Tell
me why I find you thus?--you, who have always borne your griefs with
such silent fortitude. What _has_ my aunt said or done to you?"

"She has ceased to love me,--she has ceased to esteem me,--she even
repents of the benefits she has conferred upon me."

"No, no, Madeleine; you are mistaken."

"Oh, I am not mistaken,--my eyes are opened at last. The thin, waxen
mask of assumed kindness has melted from her face! I am a burden to
her,--an encumbrance,--an offence. She only desires to be rid of me!"

"You,--the fairy of good works in her household? What could she do
without you? It is only excitement which makes you imagine this."

"I never guessed, never dreamed it before; but I have wilfully deceived
myself. _Now_ all is too clear! A thousand recollections rise up to
testify to the truth; a thousand suspicions, which I repulsed as
unworthy of me and of her, return to convince me; words and looks,
coldness and injustice, slights and reproaches start up with frightful
vividness, and throw a hideous light upon conduct I never dared to
interpret aright."

"What looks? what words? what actions?" asked Bertha, though her heart
told her with what a catalogue she could answer her own question.

"They could not be rehearsed in an hour or in a day. But it is not to my
aunt alone that my presence is offensive. Cousin Tristan also chafes a