ad beheld misery, and glory, and all the painful scenes that wait on
warfare; he had seen pestilence, and death in every shape, and all this
had wrought in him a sort of stoicism, the result of long acquaintance
with solitude and danger. He remembered his old love as a flower he had
once admired as he passed it, a treacherous flower, with thorns that had
wounded him. There are flowers that are beneficent, and flowers that are
poisonous, and the last are sometimes the most beautiful. They should
not be blamed, he thought; it was their nature to be hurtful; but it was
well to pass them by and not to gather them.

By the time he had debarked Fred had made up his mind to let his mother
choose a wife for him, a daughter-in-law suited to herself, who would
give her the delight of grandchildren, who would bring them up well,
and who would not weary of Lizerolles. But a week later the idea of this
kind of marriage had gone out of his head, and this change of feeling
was partly owing to Giselle. Giselle gave him a smile of welcome that
went to his heart, for that poor heart, after all, was only waiting for
a chance again to give itself away. She was with Madame d'Argy, who had
not been well enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he
saw at the same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at
Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought
so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and
tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and
goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry,
and fainted away.

"Don't be alarmed; it is only joy," said Giselle, in her soft voice.

And when Madame d'Argy proved her to be right by recovering very
quickly, overwhelming her son with rapid questions and covering him with
kisses, Giselle held out her hand to him and said:

"I, too, am very glad you have come home."

"Oh!" cried the sick woman in her excitement, "you must kiss your old
playfellow!"

Giselle blushed a little, and Fred, more embarrassed than she, lightly
touched with his lips her pretty smooth hair which shone upon her head
like a helmet of gold. Perhaps it was this new style of hairdressing
which made her seem so much more beautiful than he remembered her, but
it seemed to him he saw her for the first time; while, with the greatest
eagerness, notwithstanding Giselle's attempts to interrupt her, Madame
d'Argy repe