“I am going into the village,” Miss Vaux said. “If you will tell me where that poor woman lives you were speaking of last night, Gabrielle, I will call upon her now.”

“Let me go with you,” Gabrielle said quickly. “I told her we would come together. Wait for me one minute, and I will be ready.”

“I scarcely see the need of it. You are looking pale and ill, Gabrielle. I would advise you to stay in the house and rest.”

“I have a headache, and the air will do it good,” Gabrielle answered. “Let me go, sister?”

“As you will, then,” Miss Vaux said, and Gabrielle went away to dress.

She had not yet recovered her usual gay spirits; but was still grave, quiet, and apparently occupied with her own thoughts, and the two walked side by side, almost without speaking, along the little path over the field which lay between their house and the village. It was a very bright, sunny summer’s day; too hot, indeed, for walking, but beautiful to look at. The heat seemed to weary Gabrielle, she walked so very slowly, and was so pale.

“This is the house, sister. We go through the kitchen; she has the room above.”

They raised the latch and went in. No one was in the lower room; so they passed through, and ascended a low, narrow staircase, almost like a ladder, which rose abruptly from a doorway at the farther side, until they reached another door which stood facing them, without any landing between it and the highest step. Gabrielle knocked, and a faint voice from within answered—“Come in;” and she entered, followed by her sister. It was a very small room, and very bare of furniture; for there was little in it but a deal bedstead, an old table, and one or two odd ricketty chairs, in one of which—that boasted of a pair of broken arms, and something that had once been a cushion—sat the woman they had come to visit.

Gabrielle went quickly up to her, and taking her hand said in a low voice—

“I have brought my sister, as I promised—my eldest sister.”

The woman bowed her head without speaking then tried to rise from her seat, but she seemed very weak, and her hand trembled as she leaned on the arm of her chair.

“Do not rise, my good woman,” Miss Vaux said kindly; and her voice sounded almost soft—she was so used to attune it so as to be in harmony with a sick chamber—“do not rise; I see you are very weak,” and she drew a chair near, and sat down by her side

“You have come quite lately to the village, my sister tells me.”

“Quite lately, less than a week ago,” was the answer; but spoken in so low a voice that the words were scarcely audible.

“Were you ever here before? Have you any connection with the place?” Miss Vaux asked.

“No, none.”

“But you had probably some motive in coming here? Have you no relations or friends?”

“No, no,” the woman cried, suddenly bursting into tears, “I have no friends, no friends in the wide world.”

A gentle hand was laid on her shoulder; a gentle voice whispered some soft words in her ear, and the woman looked up into Gabrielle’s dark eyes, and murmured something between her sobs. Then they were all silent for a few moments.

“I think you are a widow,” Miss Vaux asked gently, when she had become calmer.

“Yes,” she answered slowly, as though the word had been dragged from her, so much it seemed to pain her to speak it.

“And have you any children?”

A moment’s pause, and then another “yes,” hardly intelligible from the choking sob which accompanied it.

Miss Vaux was silent, looking inquiringly into the woman’s face. It was partly turned from her, partly shaded with her thin hand; her large eyes looking up with a strange agonized look into Gabrielle’s eyes, her pale lips moving convulsively. Gabrielle’s face was almost as pale as hers; her look almost as full of agony.

Miss Vaux glanced from one to the other, at first with pity; then suddenly a quick change came over her face, a deep flush mounted to her brow, she darted from her seat, and—calm as she ordinarily was—her whole figure trembled as she stood before them, with her fierce gaze turned on them.

Pale as death, neither of them speaking, they bore her passionate look; quite motionless, too, except that Gabrielle had instinctively clasped the widow’s hand in hers, and held it tightly.

“Speak to me, Gabrielle!” Miss Vaux cried; and her voice, harsh, loud, and quivering with passion, echoed through the room—“tell me who this woman is?”

From the widow’s lips there burst one word—one word like a sudden bitter cry—“Joanna!”

She stretched out her arms imploringly, trying to grasp even her daughter’s dress; but Miss Vaux sprung from her, and stood erect in the center of the room; her tall figure drawn to its full height; her burning eye still turned with unutterable anger upon the crouching woman near her.

“You have dared to do this. You have dared to seek us out here, where we had hoped to hide ourselves from the scoffing of the bitter, heartless world; where we had tried by acts of charity, by suffering and penance, to blot out the recollection of the shame that you have brought upon us! Are we nowhere secure from you? What have we to do with you? You cast us off years ago.”

“Sister, sister,” cried Gabrielle’s imploring voice, “oh, remember, whatever she has done, that she is still our mother. Have mercy on her, for she cannot bear this!”

But sternly and coldly came Miss Vaux’s answer—

“Did she remember that we were her children when she left us? Did she remember that our father was her husband? We all loved her then—she was very dear to us—but she turned all our warm love into bitterness. She destroyed our happiness at one stroke, for ever; she blighted, without a pang, all the hope of our young lives; she branded us with a mark of shame that we can never shake off; she plunged an arrow into the heart of each of us, which lies festering there now. Are these things to be forgiven? I tell you it is impossible! I will never forgive her—I swore it by my father’s deathbed—never while I live! Gabrielle, this is no place for you. Come home with me.”

“Hear me first?” the mother cried, creeping from the seat in which she had sunk back, and cowering, with hidden face, had listened to her daughter’s words, “hear me before you go! I have deserved every thing—every thing you can say; but oh, from you it is bitter to hear it! Oh! my daughter, listen to me.” She flung herself at Miss Vaux’s feet, on the bare floor.

“You speak of the sorrows I have brought upon you—the sorrow and the shame; but have they equalled what I have endured? Day and night—day and night—through months and years—fourteen long years—oh, think of it! I have wished to kill myself, but I dared not do it; I have prayed fervently to die. Oh, no, no, stay and listen to me! My last hope—my last hope in heaven and earth is only with you. Oh, my daughter! you say you loved me once—will not one spark of the old love live again? I will try yet once more to move you to pity. I have not told you all. I have not told you how, in my agony, I tried to find rest and peace; how I sought it everywhere—wandering from place to place alone, in hunger and thirst, in cold and weariness, in poverty and wretchedness; finding none anywhere, until at last, worn out with misery, I wandered here. And here I saw Gabrielle, my beautiful child, my love, my darling!”

The wan face lighted up with passionate love, as she looked at her who was kneeling by her side.

“She believed me when I told her of my sorrow. She comforted me with such sweet words, that they sank like healing balm into my soul, as though an angel’s voice had spoken. Do not take her from me!”

“Mother, do not fear,” Gabrielle’s soothing voice whispered, “I will stay with you—did I not promise it?”

“Gabrielle!” cried Miss Vaux, “come with me, and leave her. The tie that once bound us to her she herself has severed for ever; we have nothing further to do with her. Gabrielle, come!”

“I cannot come. She is my mother. I cannot leave her.”

“And we are your sisters. To whom do you owe most? We have watched over you through your life; we have shielded you from sorrow; we have loved you almost with the love that she ought to have given you. You have been the single joy that we have had for years. Have you no love to give us in return for all we have given you? Oh, Gabrielle—my sister, I pray you!—I, who am so little used to entreat any one, I pray you for the sake of the love we have borne you—for the sake of the honor that is still left us—for the sake of all that you hold sacred—come, come back with us!”

A low moan burst from the mother’s lips; for Gabrielle, weeping bitterly, rose from her knees, and threw herself into her sister’s arms.

“Heaven bless you for this!” Miss Vaux exclaimed; but interrupting her in a broken voice, Gabrielle cried—

“You do not understand me. I cannot return with you. No, sister. Any thing—any thing else I will do, but I cannot forsake her in her penitence. Can you do it yourself? Oh! sister, will you not take her home?”

“I will not.”

There was a long pause, broken once or twice by the deep sobs that seemed bursting the mother’s heart. Then Miss Vaux spoke again, earnestly, even imploringly—

“Gabrielle, I ask you once more, for the last time, to return with me. Foolish child, think what you are doing. You are bringing down your father’s dying curse upon your head—you are piercing the hearts of those who love you with new and bitter sorrow; you are closing—willfully closing—against yourself the door that is still open to receive you; you are making yourself homeless—a wanderer—perhaps a beggar. Oh, my dear sister Gabrielle, think once more—think of all this!”

“Sister, spare me further; your words wound me; but I have decided, and I cannot return with you. My mother’s home is my home.”

“Then I say no more,” Miss Vaux exclaimed, while her whole figure shook. “May God forgive you for what you do this day!”

The door closed, and Gabrielle and her mother were left alone.

Gently and lovingly Gabrielle raised her from the ground, led her to her seat, and tried to calm and soothe her—though she wept herself the while—with cheerful, tender words.

“Mother, are you not glad to have me with you—your own little Gabrielle? You said it would make you happy, and yet see how you are weeping. Hush! mother dear, hush! I will be always with you now, to nurse you, and take care of you, and comfort you, and you will get strong and well soon; and some day, mother, some day perhaps their hearts will soften, and they will forgive us both, and take us home to them, and we will all live again together, loving one another.” And Gabrielle tried to smile through the tears that were falling still.

“My child, I am weak and selfish,” the mother said. “I should have told you to go back to your home, and to leave me, but I could not do it. Yet even now my heart is reproaching me for what I have done. How are we to live? My Gabrielle, you do not know how I have struggled and labored, sometimes, only for a crust of bread.”

“Mother, you shall labor no more. My sisters are very just: all that is mine they will give me. We will live on very little; we will find out some quiet little village, where no one will know who we are, or where we came from, and there we will rest together. I will never leave you more—never more until death parts us.”

She hung upon her mother’s neck, kissing the pale brow and sunken cheek, and wiping away the tears that were yet falling: though more slowly and more calmly falling now.

——