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 your illness that keeps him here, but she is very much troubled. It would touch your heart to see her. She has grown so thin and does not eat. Could he come, if only for a little while?' Mademoiselle Ludérac reiterated, and it did not seem strange to either of them that she spoke to Jill and not to Graham.

'But of course he will,' said Jill in her confident tone of reassurance. 'Poor old dear! Of course you will, Dick, won't you?—I'm quite all right now. You could go to-night, for a little while. It's as bright as day with the moon, isn't it? It will be so lovely in the forest.—You will go, Dick?'

'Yes. Certainly I'll go,' Graham answered.

He was looking at Mademoiselle Ludérac, who looked at Jill, and he found that he could look at her fixedly. For he saw now that, though there was to be a next chapter, it would be empty of her; even though it was not to be empty of Madame de Lamouderie. He would never find Mademoiselle Ludérac at the Manoir and he and Jill, indeed, could not have left Buissac without seeing their old friend.

'Oh—I thank you so much, so very much,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, continuing to look at Jill. 'It has made me unhappy to see her so shaken. It is a real devotion that she feels, and to be cut away from it, so suddenly, is perilous for her.—It is not kind to leave her so, when she cares so much—and without a word.'

And suddenly, listening to her, Graham was aware of a passionate resentment in Mademoiselle Ludérac's voice, and that she spoke through tears. It was natural