Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/6

6 member, he told me that he never heard it himself, and that—strange as it may seem—the daughter of the Madame had asked him to let that part of their acquaintance be omitted, and simply address them as Madame and Mademoiselle.

The old stone house stood opposite a cemetery of so ancient a date that the tombstones were decaying. Many years had passed since this abode of the dead finally ceased to be of interest to anybody; and in a few more generations it would again become a grain field, and its monuments serve as doorsteps and Parisian cobblestones. On the north of the house lay a beautiful valley, where flocks and herds grazed, and where my friend lay in the sunshine for hours gazing at the glorious skies of southern France.

The Madame of the house was a small, slender, white-haired woman of over seventy years of age. Her daughter, who was the only other person in the house, passed her fifty-fourth year during M. de Corbière's sojourn there. She was a woman of no little intelligence; and had it not been for the ugly difference in the color of her eyes, might even yet have