h snowy linen, by the kindest of hands,
had been ready for me these three hours. But I was not unattended. My
friends, some dozen of them, would see me home to my mother's door--
would wring her hand in hearty congratulation at my return.

In the morning you may be sure I had plenty of callers. It was like a
_levee_. They began to come before I was up, but my mother would not
suffer that I should be waked. And I, who had not slept in a Christian
bed for years, slept like a top, and slept it out.

I was sitting at my breakfast of cutlets, omelette, and white wine, when
Cecile knocked at the door of the cottage.

"Enter!" said my mother.

"Ah, Cecile!" I cried; "but not the Cecile I left at Benevent when I
went away."

For she was altered. She had grown more matronly. The loveliness of
her girlhood had gone. It had given place to the more mature beauty of
womanhood. What a difference four years makes to a girl!

"Pierre," she cries, "we are _so_ glad to see you back! You bring us
news--the news we all want that I want."

She looked impatiently toward me. Perhaps her eyes expressed more to me
than her words; for her mother was Spanish, and Cecile had her mother's
great, black, saucer eyes, with their long fringe of jet lashes. Still,
her look was not what I had expected to see. She wore sad-coloured
draperies, but she was not in mourning. Her dress was rich, of Lyons
silk, and this surprised me; for her people were poor, and a sailor's
widow is not always too well off at Benevent. Seamen are, not
uncommonly, judges of merchandise. Do we not trade with the Indies, and
a thousand other outlandish places? In this way it came about that I
involuntarily counted up the cost of Cecile's costly habit and rich
lace. But this mental inventory took hardly a second--certainly, less
time than it takes me to tell.

"Cecile," I said, "my poor girl, I wish that I could tell you good news.
Your husband sailed with me. It was his lot to be one of the less
lucky ones. Marc--"

"Is dead!" said Cecile, calmly. "I knew it all along--these three
years. I felt it. Something told me long ago Marc was dead!"

She said this so quietly that I was astonished--perhaps a little
shocked. Sailors' widows in Benevent mourn their husbands' loss for
years. My mother was a sailor's widow ever since I knew her. No offer
of a new ring could ever tempt her to throw aside the old one. She was
true as Love.

I replied, wit