“Go and tell them I am coming, Rose.”

“No, Josephine, I will not leave you till this terrible meeting is over.  We will encounter him hand in hand, as we used to go when our hearts were one, and we deceived others, but never each other.”

At this tender reproach Josephine fell upon her neck and wept.

“I will not deceive you,” she said.  “I am worse than the poor doctor thinks me.  My life is but a little candle that a breath may put out any day.”

Rose said nothing, but trembled and watched her keenly.

“My little Henri,” said Josephine imploringly, “what would you do with him—­if anything should happen to me?”

“What would I do with him?  He is mine.  I should be his mother.  Oh! what words are these:  my heart! my heart!”

“No, dearest; some day you will be married, and owe all the mother to your children; and Henri is not ours only:  he belongs to some one I have seemed unkind to.  Perhaps he thinks me heartless.  For I am a foolish woman; I don’t know how to be virtuous, yet show a man my heart.  But then he will understand me and forgive me.  Rose, love, you will write to him.  He will come to you.  You will go together to the place where I shall be sleeping.  You will show him my heart.  You will tell him all my long love that lasted to the end.  You need not blush to tell him all.  I have no right.  Then you will give him his poor Josephine’s boy, and you will say to him, ’She never loved but you:  she gives you all that is left of her, her child.  She only prays you not to give him a bad mother.’”

Poor soul! this was her one bit of little, gentle jealousy; but it made her eyes stream.  She would have put out her hand from the tomb to keep her boy’s father single all his life.

“Oh! my Josephine, my darling sister,” cried Rose, “why do you speak of death?  Do you meditate a crime?”

“No; but it was on my heart to say it:  it has done me good.”

“At least, take me to your bosom, my well-beloved, that I may not see your tears.”

“There—­tears?  No, you have lightened my heart.  Bless you! bless you!”

The sisters twined their bosoms together in a long, gentle embrace.  You might have taken them for two angels that flowed together in one love, but for their tears.

A deep voice was now heard in the sitting-room.

Josephine and Rose postponed the inevitable one moment more, by arranging their hair in the glass:  then they opened the door, and entered the tapestried room.

Raynal was sitting on the sofa, the baroness’s hand in his.  Edouard was not there.

Colonel Raynal had given him a strange look, and said, “What, you here?” in a tone of voice that was intolerable.

Raynal came to meet the sisters.  He saluted Josephine on the brow.

“You are pale, wife:  and how cold her hand is.”

“She has been ill this month past,” said Rose interposing.