had gone to Kingsmead for a day
or two, and on each occasion her note, written to the violinist at her
mother's suggestion, asking him down to dine and spend the night, had
met with telegraphic acceptance.

"Good-bye, little brother."

"Good-bye, Bicky, give him my love." Tommy's small eyes beamed with
fanatical affection, and Brigit kissed him again.

Then she went downstairs, picked up a passing hansom, and sped to
Paradise.

CHAPTER SIX

Felicie Louise Marie Joyselle was sitting in her bedroom, darning her
husband's socks.

She sat in a straight-backed chair near the dressing-table, and a huge
basket of mending of different kinds stood on the floor by her side. The
room was very simple, for she loved the well-polished black-walnut
furniture among which she had lived all her married life, and nothing
would have induced her to change it for new, however beautiful.

The walls were adorned with religious prints, but on the space over the
dressing-table, with its array of ebony and silver hair-brushes, was a
group of old, faded photographs, evidently all of the same
person--Joyselle; and over the chimney-piece hung four large oval
photographs, in varnished black frames, picked out with narrow red
stripes; quite evidently four middle-aged peasants in their best attire.
Near the door a coloured crayon of Theo at the age of five, in plaid
trousers, a short jacket, and a wide collar of crochetted lace, smiled
sheepishly down at the world. There was a table covered with books of
the kind whose gilt edges invariably stick together, because they are
never opened, and on the little table on the left of the broad bed, with
its scarlet counterpane and huge, soft-looking pillows, were an old
black crucifix and two shabby prayer-books.

It was a plain, inartistic room, and the middle-aged woman whose holy
of holies it had been for fifteen years was as old-fashioned and
unbeautiful as it; yet there was, somehow, about the place a certain
atmosphere of goodness and peace that cannot be described in words.

When Brigit Mead came in that afternoon she kissed Madame Joyselle as
usual, and then taking off her hat and coat, drew up another
stiff-backed chair and sat down.

"How are you, _petite mere_?" she asked gently, in French.

"I am well, as I always am, thank God. And you? And Tommy?"

"Tommy has a bad throat, but it is nothing. He sent his love. I am very
fit."

Madame Joyselle cut her cotton, scrutinised he