h
there is no return.

"Darling mother," Louis said at last, "why do you hide your pain from
me?"

"My boy, we ought to hide our troubles from strangers," she said; "we
should show them a smiling face, never speak of ourselves to them, nor
think about ourselves; and these rules, put in practice in family life,
conduce to its happiness. You will have much to bear one day! Ah me!
then think of your poor mother who died smiling before your eyes, hiding
her sufferings from you, and you will take courage to endure the ills of
life."

She choked back her tears, and tried to make the boy understand
the mechanism of existence, the value of money, the standing and
consideration that it gives, and its bearing on social position;
the honorable means of gaining a livelihood, and the necessity of a
training. Then she told him that one of the chief causes of her sadness
and her tears was the thought that, on the morrow of her death, he and
Marie would be left almost resourceless, with but a slender stock of
money, and no friend but God.

"How quick I must be about learning!" cried Louis, giving her a piteous,
searching look.

"Oh! how happy I am!" she said, showering kisses and tears on her son.
"He understands me!--Louis," she went on, "you will be your brother's
guardian, will you not? You promise me that? You are no longer a child!"

"Yes, I promise," he said; "but you are not going to die yet--say that
you are not going to die!"

"Poor little ones!" she replied, "love for you keeps the life in me. And
this country is so sunny, the air is so bracing, perhaps----"

"You make me love Touraine more than ever," said the child.

From that day, when Mme. Willemsens, foreseeing the approach of death,
spoke to Louis of his future, he concentrated his attention on his work,
grew more industrious, and less inclined to play than heretofore. When
he had coaxed Marie to read a book and to give up boisterous games,
there was less noise in the hollow pathways and gardens and terraced
walks of La Grenadiere. They adapted their lives to their mother's
melancholy. Day by day her face was growing pale and wan, there were
hollows now in her temples, the lines in her forehead grew deeper night
after night.

August came. The little family had been five months at La Grenadiere,
and their whole life was changed. The old servant grew anxious and
gloomy as she watched the almost imperceptible symptoms of slow decline
in the mistress, who seem