ntury ago. For it was now
just thirty-five years since the last visit of their English friend. She
too, if she were alive, must be a woman of more than sixty. They had
never heard of her again. In the hurry and anxiety of their last meeting
they had forgotten to ask and she to give her exact address, so they
could not write. She might have written to them to the old house
perhaps, on the chance of it finding them; but if so, they had never got
the letter. Yet they often spoke of her, and never saw the balcony at
the end of the terrace without a kindly thought of those long ago days.

"One evening--an autumn evening--mild and balmy, the two old ladies were
slowly pacing up and down their favourite walk, when a servant came out
to say that they were wanted--a lady was asking for them. But not to
disturb them, he added, the visitor would be glad to see them in the
garden, if they would allow it. Wondering who it could be, Madame and
her sister were hesitating what to do, when a figure was seen
approaching them from the house.

"'I could not wait,' she said, almost before she reached them. 'I wished
so much to see you once more in the old spot, dear friends;' and they
knew her at once. They recognised in the bowed and worn but still sweet
and lovely woman, their pretty child-friend of fifty years ago. She had
come to bid them farewell, she said. She was on her way to the
south--not to live but to die, for she had suffered much and her days
were numbered.

"'My dear husband is dead some years ago,' she said. 'But we were very
happy together, which is a blessed thought. And my children--one after
another they faded. So I am an old woman now and quite alone, and I am
glad to go to them all. My friends wished me to go to the south, for I
have always loved the sunshine, and there my little daughter died, and
perhaps death will there come to me in gentler shape. But on my way, I
wished to say good-bye to you, dear friends of long ago, whom I have
always loved, though we have been so little together.'

"And then they took each other's hands, gently and quietly, the three
old ladies, and softly kissed each other's withered cheeks, down which a
few tears made their way; the time was past for them for anything but
gentle and chastened feelings. And whispering to their old friend not
good-bye, but 'Au revoir, au revoir in a better country,' my ladies
parted once more with their childish friend.

"She died a few months later; news