adame Deberle proceeded to draw down the embroidered tulle
blind of a window facing her, and then returned to her sofa in the
mellowed, golden light of the room.

"I beg pardon," she now said. "We have had quite an invasion."

Then, in an affectionate way, she entered into conversation with
Helene. She seemed to know some details of her history, doubtless from
the gossip of her servants. With a boldness that was yet full of tact,
and appeared instinct with much friendliness, she spoke to Helene of
her husband, and of his sad death at the Hotel du Var, in the Rue de
Richelieu.

"And you had just arrived, hadn't you? You had never been in Paris
before. It must be awful to be plunged into mourning, in a strange
room, the day after a long journey, and when one doesn't know a single
place to go to."

Helene assented with a slow nod. Yes, she had spent some very bitter
hours. The disease which carried off her husband had abruptly declared
itself on the day after their arrival, just as they were going out
together. She knew none of the streets, and was wholly unaware what
district she was in. For eight days she had remained at the bedside of
the dying man, hearing the rumble of Paris beneath her window, feeling
she was alone, deserted, lost, as though plunged in the depths of an
abyss. When she stepped out on the pavement for the first time, she
was a widow. The mere recalling of that bare room, with its rows of
medicine bottles, and with the travelling trunks standing about
unpacked, still made her shudder.

"Was your husband, as I've been told, nearly twice your age?" asked
Madame Deberle with an appearance of profound interest, while
Mademoiselle Aurelie cocked her ears so as not to lose a syllable of
the conversation.

"Oh, no!" replied Helene. "He was scarcely six years older."

Then she ventured to enter into the story of her marriage, telling in
a few brief sentences how her husband had fallen deeply in love with
her while she was living with her father, Monsieur Mouret, a hatter in
the Rue des Petites-Maries, at Marseilles; how the Grandjean family,
who were rich sugar-refiners, were bitterly opposed to the match, on
account of her poverty. She spoke, too, of the ill-omened and secret
wedding after the usual legal formalities, and of their hand-to-mouth
existence, till the day an uncle on dying left them some ten thousand
francs a year. It was then that Grandjean, within whom an intense
hatred of Marseilles wa