matter. The baron answered by placing the telegram in his hands, and paced the room in a frenzy while Père Yvon read it. The chaplain's first thought was for the poor widowed mother, whose darling son was thus cut off in the beauty of his youth. He had known her so many years, and had comforted her in so many sorrows, it was natural he should think of her first, before the other mother, who had her husband to comfort her, and whose child was only an infant of a few months old.

"La pauvre baronne! My poor madame! It will break her heart: her darling son," murmured the chaplain.

"Ah, poor Léon. I can't realise it yet that we shall never see him again, and my poor, innocent baby too; it will kill Mathilde. Oh, mon père, how are we to tell them?" groaned the baron.

"I will tell your mother; it is not the first time I have been the bearer of ill news to her, and you must break it as gently as you can to your wife. It is a sad day indeed for this household, but the Lord's will be done. He knows best, and He will not send any of us more than we are able to bear," replied Père Yvon, as he went on his sad mission to the old baroness.

As he had said, he had broken many sorrows to her, but he had never had to deal a heavier blow than when he told her her favourite son was drowned, the son of whom she was so proud, whom she loved better than all her other children; but the baroness was a saintly woman, and one of her first sayings after she heard the news was, "Mon père, it is hard, but it is just—he was my idol."

She did not grieve in any extravagant way; she did not absent herself from any meals; she attended mass, for she was a devout Catholic, in the private chapel every morning, and, indeed, spent a great deal of time there in prayer; she never gave up one of her accustomed duties, visited the poor as regularly as ever, but from the day she heard the sad news to her death, which happened a few years later, she was scarcely seen to smile again, and she was never heard to mention Léon's name except to Père Yvon. Hers was a life-long sorrow, too deep for words, too deep for even tears to assuage its poignancy; her heart was broken; she had no further interest in this life; all her hopes were centred on that life where she hoped to meet her darling son again, never to be separated from him.

The young baroness bore her trial very differently. She gave way to a passionate outburst of grief on learning that her baby was drowned—a grief in which the baron shared, and was, indeed, in more need of consolation than his wife, for to his sorrow was added remorse and bitterest stings of conscience for having brought such sorrow to his wife, about whom he was very anxious, until the doctor assured him the sad certainty was even better for her than the terrible suspense she had been enduring for the last week. To a young, passionate nature hitherto undisciplined by the sorrows of life, like the young baroness's, anything was easier to bear than suspense, and the doctor assured Arnaud that the passionate grief in which his wife indulged would do her no harm—on the contrary, she was more likely to get over it quickly. Violent grief is rarely lasting; there invariably follows a reaction.

A few days later the baron received another telegram from the Havre agents, telling him they had found out that the Hirondelle had left Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast, where she had been lying for two or three days, the day before she was lost, and was then intending to cruise round the coast of Great Britain. The baron was immediately raised from the depths of despair to the highest pinnacle of hope on hearing this, for he felt sure Léon had gone ashore at Yarmouth to place the baby with some Englishwoman, and had remained there some days on purpose. Confiding his new hope to Père Yvon, he at once decided to start that night for England by Dover and Calais, for already steamers ran once or twice a week between these ports. He would then go on to Yarmouth by stage-coach, and make all inquiries for his baby. His difficulty was, he did not know the language, but living near the Château de Thorens was a Monsieur de Courcy, who had married an English wife, and spoke English very well. He was intimate with the De Thorens, and the baron hoped he might be able to help him in his trouble.

Accordingly he called on the De Courcys at once, and, to his great relief, Monsieur de Courcy offered to go to Yarmouth with him, while Madame de Courcy suggested that the baroness should come and stay with her during their husbands' absence, for the château was a very gloomy place for the poor young mother while the shadow of death rested upon it. Arnaud jumped at this, for he had never been separated from his wife since their marriage, and he would far rather leave her with this pretty young English lady than at the château, while his mother's grief for Léon saddened the whole household. It was easy to account for his journey to England, by saying that he was going to get particulars of the accident from the place off which it happened. This would seem only natural to Mathilde, who must on no account be told that he had any hope of finding the child. She had accepted the news of its death without questioning it, and it was far better to let her continue under this impression than to raise fresh hopes, which, after all, might never be realised, and if he could only persuade her to come to Parc du Baffy while he was away he would feel quite happy about her.

Madame de Courcy and the baroness were on intimate terms with each other, although Madame de Courcy was a staunch Protestant, and both the baron and baroness bigoted Romanists; but the great attraction to Mathilde, as Madame de Courcy guessed, would be her child, a beautiful boy of three years old, in whom the baroness had delighted until her own baby was born and absorbed all her time and affection. Knowing this, Madame de Courcy offered to send her boy to the château with the baron, hoping to inveigle the baroness to return with him to Parc du Baffy, a manœuvre which succeeded admirably, for Mathilde, not having seen the little Rex for some weeks, was so enraptured with him that she could not part with him, and as Madame de Courcy could not be asked to spare her child as well as her husband, the baroness consented to go and stay at the Parc while the baron was away. The little Rex was too old to remind her of her own baby, and his pretty mixture of French and English amused her immensely, and for the moment charmed away her sorrow. Had she known the real object of her husband's visit to England, the suspense and anxiety would have made her seriously ill; not knowing it, the change and Rex's society did her good, so that Madame de Courcy was able, after a day or two, to write to the baron and tell him his wife was certainly better and more cheerful since she had been at the Parc du Baffy.

Meanwhile the baron and M. de Courcy reached Yarmouth safely, and learned the day and hour on which the Hirondelle arrived and also left Yarmouth, and that the cause of her remaining so long there was the absconding of an English sailor, named, or, at all events, calling himself, John Smith. The baron was more elated than ever at hearing this, for he knew the Englishman was to place the baby out to nurse, and if he were safe, the chances were that the child was too; but when, after having run two or three John Smiths to earth and discovered that they bore no resemblance to the original, it became evident that the real John Smith had made himself scarce, and was probably not John Smith at all, the baron's hopes of recovering the child again fell, though he could not abandon the idea that if he could only find the runaway sailor he should hear some news of the child. The wish was, perhaps, father to the thought, but he could not help thinking the child was not on board the Hirondelle when she went down, now that he found the English carpenter had left the yacht at Yarmouth. But the baron felt his inability to speak