day his little ministerial head and flaxen curls were visible over
the top of his old-fashioned arm-chair, and day after day his food was
demanded, and his appetite was as good as ever.

Watching the child, whose blue eyes, now the mischief was out of them,
grew utterly vacant of expression, I unaccountably to myself came to
feel an uncomfortable interest in, a morbid sympathy with him,--an
uneasy, unhappy sympathy, more physical than mental.

No fault could have been found with the motherly carefulness and
attention of Madame C----. It was charmingly polite and French. But
the sight of her preparing the child's food, or coaxing him
with unaccustomed delicacies and _bonbons_, grew to be utterly
distasteful,--an infliction so nervously annoying that I could not
overcome it. A secret antipathy which I had nourished against Madame
seemed to be germinating; every action of hers irritated me, every
sound of her sharp, yet well-modulated voice gave me a tremor. The
truth was, that plunge into the water, taking place so unexpectedly in
my presence, had startled and upset me almost as completely as if it
had befallen myself. A hard-working woman had no business with such
nerves. I knew that, and tried to annihilate them; but the more I
cut them down, the more they bled. The thing was a mere trifle,--the
fountain-basin was shallow, the water healthy,--nothing could be more
healthy than bathing,--and, at any rate, it was no affair of mine.
Yet my mind in some unhealthy mood aggravated the circumstances, and
colored everything with its own dark hue.

I could not give up my place, of course not; I was not likely to get
so good a situation anywhere else; I could not risk it; and yet the
servitude of horror under which I was held for a few weeks was almost
enough to reconcile one to starvation. Only that I was kept busy
in the shop most of the time, and had little leisure to observe the
course of affairs, or to be in Madame's society, I should have given
warning,--foolishly enough,--for there was not a tangible thing of
which I had to complain. But a shapeless suspicion which for some days
had been brooding in my mind was taking form, too dim for me to
dare to recognize it, but real enough to make me feel a miserable
fascination to the house while little Jacques still lived, a magnetic,
uncomfortable necessity for my presence, as though it were in some
sort a protection against an impending evil.

Such suspicion I did not, of co