ered meekly. "It was only
that I thought it might be Anne. That there might be----"

"Two fools in the house instead of one!" Claude broke in, emerging
noisily, and slamming the door of his closet behind him. "There, come,
and we may hope to be back to supper some time to-night! Do you hear?"
And jealously shepherding the other out of the house, he withdrew the
key when both had passed the threshold. Locking the door on the outside,
he thrust the key under it. "There!" he said, smiling at his cleverness,
"now, who enters--knocks!"

CHAPTER XIV.

"AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!"

In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of
the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition
he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far
astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the
love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more
simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound
together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the
midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril.
Almost forgotten by the world below, which had its own cares, its
alarums and excursions, its strivings and aims, they lived for one
another. The weak health of the one and the brave spirit of the other
had gradually inverted their positions; and the younger was mother, the
elder, daughter. Yet each retained, in addition, the pious instincts of
the original relation. To each the welfare of the other was the prime
thought. To give the other the better portion, be it of food or wine, of
freedom from care, or ease of mind, and to take the worse, was to each
the ground plan of life, as it was its chiefest joy.

In their eyrie above the anxious city they led an existence all their
own. Between them were a hundred jests, Greek to others; and whimsical
ways, and fond sayings and old smiles a thousand times repeated. And
things that must be done after one fashion or the sky would fall; and
others that must be done after another fashion or the world would end.
When the house was empty of boarders, or nearly empty--though at such
times the cupboard also was apt to be bare--there were long hours spent
upstairs and surveys of household gear, carried up with difficulty, and
reviews of linen and much talk of it, and small meals, taken at the open
windows that looked over the Rhone vall