, was the only one who was ever
cheerful.

To Madame Rivals, Cecile was at once a blessing and a sorrow, for the
child was a perpetual reminder of the daughter she had lost. To the
doctor, on the contrary, it seemed that the little girl had taken her
mother's place, and sometimes, when he was with her alone, he would
give way to a loud and merry laugh, which would be quickly silenced on
meeting his wife's sad eyes, full of astonished reproach.

Little Cecile's life was by no means a gay one. She lived in the garden,
or in a large room where a door, that was always closed, led to the
apartment that had once been her mother's, and which was full of the
souvenirs of that short life. Madame Rivals alone ever entered this
room, but little Cecile often stood on the threshold, awed and silent.
The child had never been sent to school, and this isolation was very
bad for her; she needed the association of other children. "Let us ask
little D'Argenton here," said her grandfather: "the boy is charming!"

"Yes; but who knows anything about these people? Whence do they come?"
answered his wife. "Who knows them?"

"Everybody, my dear. The husband is very eccentric, certainly, but he is
an artist, or a journalist rather, and they are privileged. The woman
is not quite a lady, I admit, but she is well enough. I will answer for
their respectability."

Madame Rivals shook her head. She had but slight confidence in her
husband's insight into character, and sighed in an ostentatious way.

Old Rivals colored guiltily, but returned in a moment to his original
idea.

"The child will be ill if she has not some change. Besides, what harm
could possibly happen?"

The grandmother then consented, and Jack and Cecile became close
companions. The old lady grew very fond of the little fellow. She saw
that he was neglected at home, that the buttons were off his coat, and
that he had no lesson-hours.

"Do you not go to school, my dear?"

"No, madame," was the answer; and then quickly added,--for a child's
instinct is very delicate,--"Mamma teaches me."

"I cannot understand," said Madame Rivals to her husband, "how they can
let this child grow up in this way, idling his time from morning till
night."

"The child is not very clever," answered the doctor, anxious to excuse
his friends.

"No, it is not that; it is that his stepfather does not like him."

Jack's best friends were in the doctor's house. Cecile adored him. They
played toge