she lay
in her coffin, and Saintou paid heavily for masses for her sweet soul.
When they had laid her in the churchyard he came home, and took the key,
and went into the little parlour all alone. She had never seen it. She
had never even heard of it. It is sad to bury a baby that is dead; it
is sadder, if we but knew it, to bury in darkness and silence a child
that has never lived. A joy that has gone from us for ever is a jewel
that trembles like a tear on Sorrow's breast, but the brightest stars in
her diadem are the memories of hopes that have passed away unrealised
and untold. Ah well, perhaps the gay trappings of the little room, by
their daily influence on his life, drew him nearer to heaven. He gave
the key to his sister afterwards, and they used the room as their own;
but that day he locked himself in alone, and, hiding his face in the
cushions of her chair, he wept as only a strong man can weep.

VI

A COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

Mam'selle Zilda Chaplot keeps the station hotel at St. Armand, in the
French country.

The hotel is like a wooden barn with doors and windows, not a very large
barn either. The station is merely a platform of planks between the
hotel and the rails. The railroad is roughly made; it lies long and
straight in a flat land, snow-clad in winter, very dusty in the summer
sun, and its line is only softened by a long row of telegraph poles,
which seem to waver and tremble as the eye follows their endless
repetition into the distance. In some curious way their repetition lends
to the stark road a certain grace.

When Zilda Chaplot was young there were fewer wires on these telegraph
poles, fewer railway-lines opposite the station, fewer houses in St.
Armand, which lies half a mile away. The hotel itself is the same, but
in those days it was not painted yellow, as it is now, and was not half
so well kept. The world has progressed by twenty years since mam'selle
was a girl, and, also, she owns the place herself now, and is a much
better inn-keeper than was her father.

Mam'selle Chaplot is a very active person, tall, and somewhat stout. Her
complexion is brown; her eyes are very black; over them there is a
fringe of iron-grey hair, which she does up in curl-papers every night,
and which, in consequence, stands in very tight little curls all day.

Mam'selle Chaplot minds her affairs well; she has a keen eye to the main
chance. She is sometimes sharp, a trifle fiery, but on the whole she is