current had swept them down to the tall walnut trees of

Madame Fontaine remained in the drawing-room.

She violently closed the door with a stroke of her hand--staggered across the room to a sofa--and dropped on it. A hoarse cry of rage and despair burst from her, now that she was alone. In the fear that someone might hear her, she forced her handkerchief into her mouth, and fastened her teeth into it. The paroxysm passed, she sat up on the sofa, and wiped the perspiration from her face, and smiled to herself. "It was well I stopped here," she thought; "I might have met someone on the stairs."

As she rose to leave the drawing-room, Fritz's voice reached her from the far end of the corridor.

"You are out of spirits, Minna. Come in, and let us try what a little music will do for you."

The door leading into the recess was opened. Minna's voice became audible next, on the inner side of the curtains.

"I am afraid I can't sing to-day, Fritz. I am very unhappy about mamma. She looks so anxious and so ill; and when I ask what is troubling her, she puts me off with an excuse."

The melody of those fresh young tones, the faithful love and sympathy which the few simple words expressed, seemed to wring with an unendurable pain the whole being of the mother who heard them. She lifted her hands above her head, and clenched them in the agony which could only venture to seek that silent means of relief. With swift steps, as if the sound of her daughter's voice was unendurable to her, she made for the door. But her movements, on ordinary occasions the perfection of easy grace, felt the disturbing influence of the agitation that possessed her. In avoiding a table on one side, as she passed it, she struck against a chair on the other.

Fritz instantly opened the curtains, and looked through. "Why, here is mamma!" he exclaimed, in his hearty boyish way.