ake me very happy if she can make shift to like
me as well as her family do."--"No danger! What husband deserves to be
loved as he does? I long for his return, that his wife, his mother, and
his sister may all combine to teach this poor soldier what happiness
means. We owe him everything, Josephine, and if we did not love him, and
make him happy, we should be monsters; now should we not?"

Josephine stammered an assent.

"NOW you may read his letter: Jacintha and all," said the baroness
graciously.

The letter circulated. Meantime, the baroness conversed with Aubertin in
quite an undertone.

"My friend, look at Josephine. That girl is ill, or else she is going to
be ill."

"Neither the one nor the other, madame," said Aubertin, looking her
coolly in the face.

"But I say she is. Is a doctor's eye keener than a mother's?"

"Considerably," replied the doctor with cool and enviable effrontery.

The baroness rose. "Now, children, for our evening walk. We shall enjoy
it now."

"I trust you may: but for all that I must forbid the evening air to one
of the party--to Madame Raynal."

The baroness came to him and whispered, "That is right. Thank you. See
what is the matter with her, and tell me." And she carried off the rest
of the party.

At the same time Jacintha asked permission to pass the rest of the
evening with her relations in the village. But why that swift, quivering
glance of intelligence between Jacintha and Rose de Beaurepaire when the
baroness said, "Yes, certainly"?

Time will show.

Josephine and the doctor were left alone. Now Josephine had noticed the
old people whisper and her mother glance her way, and the whole woman
was on her guard. She assumed a languid complacency, and by way of
shield, if necessary, took some work, and bent her eyes and apparently
her attention on it.

The doctor was silent and ill at ease.

She saw he had something weighty on his mind. "The air would have done
me no harm," said she.

"Neither will a few words with me."

"Oh, no, dear friend. Only I think I should have liked a little walk
this evening."

"Josephine," said the doctor quietly, "when you were a child I saved
your life."

"I have often heard my mother speak of it. I was choked by the croup,
and you had the courage to lance my windpipe."

"Had I?" said the doctor, with a smile. He added gravely, "It seems then
that to be cruel is sometimes kindness. It is the nature of men to love
those whose lif