and,
as if that did not shut out the light of day and the busy, happy world
enough, she put out her trembling hands, and covered her face with her
handkerchief. There was no violence: hardly any sound.

"I told her what my lord had said about Clement's coming in some day, and
taking us all by surprise. I did not believe it myself, but it was just
possible,--and I had nothing else to say. Pity, to one who was striving
so hard to conceal her feelings, would have been impertinent. She let me
talk; but she did not reply. She knew that my words were vain and idle,
and had no root in my belief; as well as I did myself.

"I was very thankful when Medlicott came in with Madame's breakfast, and
gave me an excuse for leaving.

"But I think that conversation made me feel more anxious and impatient
than ever. I felt almost pledged to Madame de Crequy for the fulfilment
of the vision I had held out. She had taken entirely to her bed by this
time: not from illness, but because she had no hope within her to stir
her up to the effort of dressing. In the same way she hardly cared for
food. She had no appetite,--why eat to prolong a life of despair? But
she let Medlicott feed her, sooner than take the trouble of resisting.

"And so it went on,--for weeks, months--I could hardly count the time, it
seemed so long. Medlicott told me she noticed a preternatural
sensitiveness of ear in Madame de Crequy, induced by the habit of
listening silently for the slightest unusual sound in the house.
Medlicott was always a minute watcher of any one whom she cared about;
and, one day, she made me notice by a sign madame's acuteness of hearing,
although the quick expectation was but evinced for a moment in the turn
of the eye, the hushed breath--and then, when the unusual footstep turned
into my lord's apartments, the soft quivering sigh, and the closed
eyelids.

"At length the intendant of the De Crequy estates--the old man, you will
remember, whose information respecting Virginie de Crequy first gave
Clement the desire to return to Paris,--came to St. James's Square, and
begged to speak to me. I made haste to go down to him in the
housekeeper's room, sooner than that he should be ushered into mine, for
fear of madame hearing any sound.

"The old man stood--I see him now--with his hat held before him in both
his hands; he slowly bowed till his face touched it when I came in. Such
long excess of courtesy augured ill. He waited for me