ified, despairing
expression so touched the kind priest that he hastily added,--

"Don't be frightened, Jack. Your mother is not going away; you will find
her here."

The child still hesitated.

"Go, my dear," said Madame de Barancy, with a queenly gesture.

Then he went without another word, as if he were already conquered by
life, and prepared for all its evils.

When the door closed behind him, there was a moment of silence. The
steps of the child and his companion were heard on the frozen gravel,
and dying away, left no sound save the crackling of the fire, the chirps
of the sparrows on the eaves, the distant pianos, and an indistinct
murmur of voices--the hum of a great boarding-school.

"This child seems to love you, madame," said the Superior, touched by
Jack's submission.

"Why should he not love me?" answered Madame de Barancy, somewhat
melodramatically; "the poor dear has but his mother in the world."

"Ah! you are a widow?"

"Alas! yes, sir. My husband died ten years ago, the very year of our
marriage, and under the most painful circumstances. Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe,
romance-writers, who are at a loss to invent adventures for their
heroines, do not know that many an apparently quiet life contains enough
for ten novels. My own story is the best proof of that. The Comte
de Barancy belonged, as his name will tell you, to one of the oldest
families in Touraine."

She made a fatal mistake here, for Father O------ was born at Amboise,
and knew the nobility of the entire province. So he at once consigned
the Comte de Barancy to the society of Major-General Pembroke and the
Rajah of Singapore. He did not let this appear, however, and contented
himself with replying gently to the _soi-disant_ comtesse,--

"Do you not think with me, madame, that there would be some cruelty in
sending away a child that seems so warmly attached to you? He is still
very young; and do you think his physical health good enough to support
the grief of such a separation?"

"But you are mistaken, sir," she answered, promptly. "Jack is a very
robust child; he has never been ill. He is a little pale, perhaps,
but that is owing to the air of Paris, to which he has never been
accustomed."

Annoyed to find that she was not disposed to comprehend him, the priest
continued,--

"Besides, just now our dormitories are full; the scholastic year is very
far advanced; we have even been obliged to decline receiving new pupils
until the next