red her father in the evening, "what am I to tell
the director? Have you chosen the opera for your debut already?"

"I shall never sing in the opera, father."

"Why, what is this, Leonie? If I have got over my scruples, I do not see
that you need have any. I thought it would be just what you were longing
for."

"I do long for it," said Leonie firmly, "and therefore I think it is not
best."

"Don't speak in riddles," rejoined her father angrily. "Do you
mean to tell me that you are going to throw away your glorious
possibilities--certainties, I might say--for a whim?"

"Not for a whim, but because it is right."

"It is incomprehensible!" cried the colonel, walking the floor
excitedly. "Here have you been for years in one rhapsody of music,
nothing else in life--your mother and I and everything given up to help
you on--and now, when such a prospect opens before you, a career that a
princess might envy, when even the empress condescends to solicit
it--'No, I am not going to sing. I'll throw it all away--my talent, my
father's wishes.' Oh, it is insufferable! It is just like the perverse
willfulness of women;" and he turned upon her in a white rage.

Leonie did not quail. "Father," said she, speaking very low, but with
crystal clearness, "do you wish me to be like my mother?"

Colonel Regnault staggered back. "My poor child," he whispered faintly,
"who told you that story? Who could have the heart?"

The next day Leonie, with her father's permission, went to Macon to
spend some weeks with her aunt. Soon after her departure Madame Regnault
asked, "Now that Leonie is gone, cannot we have the children home?"

"We will bring Leon home," replied her husband. "He is a fine little
fellow, and will make the house cheerful, but the baby will be better
off in the country a year longer. We will have him in for a few days if
you like, and the nurse can come with him."

"I will go out this very afternoon," said the mother. "Jeanne will go
with me."

"No, my dear, it is too hard a jaunt for you: I will go to-morrow."

"Let me go, Leon: I feel so uneasy about the children. I cannot tell
why, but it seems as if something was going to happen to them."

"What could happen to them? and what difference will a day make? I am
glad I am not a woman, to be so anxious about nothing," said the
colonel, smiling.

About eleven o'clock on the morrow the colonel reached Rosny, and was
startled as he approached the house by an appearanc