"—the bitter language of the heart."

The shop over which Ringfield was lodging for the time was an emporium of Catholic books, pictures and images, one of those peculiarly Lower Canadian stores in the vicinity of the Rue Notre Dame, existing side by side with Indian curio shops, and rendering it possible for the emigrant and tourist to purchase maple sugar, moccasins, and birch bark canoes at the same time that he invested in purple ribbon bookmarks, gaily painted cards of the Virgin, and tiny religious valentines with rosy bleeding hearts, silver arrows and chubby kneeling infants. Amulets and crucifixes, Keys of Heaven and lives of the Blessed Saints, cheap vases of ruby and emerald glass, candles and rosaries, would at another time have afforded Ringfield much matter for speculation, but the fact was that almost as soon as he had deposited his bag on the table of the narrow bedroom assigned to him, the cold he had so long neglected caught him seriously, and for an entire day and a half he insisted on sitting at his window when he should have been in bed. On the next day his feverish symptoms increased to such an extent that the man who owned the room and who was a widower, managing for himself, sent for a nurse. Tossing on the bed, and frequently rising to look out of the window, Ringfield fretfully objected, but his landlord was firm, and sent a message at once to the Hospital of the Incarnation, the nearest charitable institution and the parent of several flourishing branches, among which was that at Lalurette where Ringfield had thought of placing Angeel. It was early on Thursday evening when the message was sent, and at ten o'clock Archibald Groom, the shopkeeper, came to say that a person recently arrived from the country was below, but that she spoke very little English. He was not answered, and bending over the bed he saw that his lodger was delirious, eyes glassy and staring and head rolling from side to side, with high colour and stertorous breathing.

To call the nurse, who was waiting in the shop, was the work of an instant; she came quickly and noiselessly up the dark stair and saw at once a case of brain fever, partly brought on by exposure and neglected cold, also recognizing in the sick man the well-known minister at St. Ignace and her husband's protÉgÉ.

Mme. Poussette, for it was she, possessed more discretion than sense, and more sense than wit; she looked calmly upon her patient as upon a stranger and set about her work in silence.

Meanwhile Edmund Crabbe, on partially recovering from his first fit of intemperance, sat up, and perceiving the well-filled flask he had brought with him, seized it, and began afresh upon its contents. He had left St. Ignace on Monday morning, and it was now Thursday; Henry Clairville was dead and buried; the funeral obsequies being of a complex nature, shabby and ornate, dignified and paltry, leisurely and hurried, while the ceremony was at least well attended, since, as Dr. Renaud had said, a Seigneur did not die every day. Profuse in the matter of lappets, crucifixes, and in the number of voluble country-folk and stout serious-lipped priests, Father Rielle, who had charge of the proceedings, was compelled to accommodate himself to circumstances, or fate, or "the Will of God," in the shape of the Archambaults—who, as Pauline foresaw, had all returned, this time to claim their own.

The disappearance of Mme. Poussette occasioned no comment; for two days after the death of Henry Clairville no one spoke to her or thanked her for all she had done, and while the funeral was in progress she put her few things in a box, and counting a small store of money Poussette had given her from time to time, went with Antoine Archambault to the station at Bois Clair, and was no more seen at St. Ignace. Of all the characters in this simple history, none perhaps was so sincerely deserving as this unfortunate Mme. Poussette, and as she passes from the stormy little village in behind the gate of the serene but busy hospital, it is pleasant to contemplate the change there in store for her. To many women who are plain and unattractive in the ever-varying hat and gown of fashion, and who, if they try to hold their own, must sooner or later resort to artificial aids to attain even moderate good looks, there is yet a refuge, that of some severe and never-changing style of dress or uniform, which bestows upon them another kind of beauty. The kitchen dish or utensil has its charm as well as the sprigged china of the closet; the jug going to the well is as grateful to the eye as the prismatic beaker upon the table, and, in like manner, the banded or braided hair, the perfect cleanliness of fresh print or linen and the straight serviceable lines of skirt and waist often contribute to make a plain woman fully as attractive as her prettier sisters. Thus Mme. Poussette, about whom there was never anything repulsive or vulgar, presented new features to the world in her exquisitely neat hospital garb; more than this, she liked her work, and gradually her expression grew less vacant; she left off humming and whispering to herself, and we leave her thus, contented, respected and of use, and, therefore, almost happy.

Indeed, many there are beside Mme. Natalie Poussette who find as life slips by and the feverish quest of happiness dies within them, that they become happy almost without knowing it in the pursuit of other things once despised, such as work, friendship, the need of earning, or the love of an abstract subject. What a contrast then does this "afflicted," this "peculiar" one afford to the restless, imaginative, gifted but unstable Pauline, in whom the quest of happiness had so far only resulted in entanglement and riot of conflicting emotions!

As she remained much indoors at this time, awaiting Crabbe's return, she dwelt much on the past, words rising to utterance that she thought would never be heard on earth touching the problems of her lonely childhood, her meeting with Crabbe, her aversion to her brother; also, the brighter pictures of the future in which she already lived the life of a London beauty and belle, or crossed to Paris and continued buying for her trousseau. Miss Cordova, with the superior wisdom of a mother, let her friend talk and agreed with all she said; her own opinion of Pauline's choice in men was not in the guide's favour, but she saw it was too late to interfere. The story of Angeel was now cleared up and, had Ringfield remained in the village, he would have learnt as well as the rest of the unexpected parentage of that poor child, and of the turn in the affairs of the country-side which brought the Archambaults on top. However wasted and however dilapidated, the Clairville domain and Manor House was one of the oldest in the province, and it began to be rumoured that a considerable fortune existed in Henry's collection of books and memoirs, offers for which were already reaching the helpless widow and mother of Angeel.

Occupied with her own dreams, Miss Clairville took little notice of her home under a new regime, and day by day she watched instead for the return of her lover, bringing definite arrangements for the marriage. There seemed at least a diminution other natural active outlook on life as a whole, and if she feared from Crabbe's rather dilatory methods that their union was in danger from too long delay, she did not say so, even to her confidante. The latter was bent upon carrying through her project with regard to Maisie and Jack, but this could not be effected until the spring, and thus, without the stimulus of the Englishman's presence, and with the remembrance of death and agitation so recently in their midst, both women were quieter than usual.

As for Ringfield, no one missed him very acutely until Saturday morning, when, upon the receipt of a letter from Mme. Prefontaine, "Poussette's" was thrown into considerable excitement. Pauline, who could rarely keep anything to herself, read her letter aloud and immediately jumped up in terror.

"Why did not some one tell me they were together; together, at the
Hotel Champlain? I tell you—something will happen!"

"To which of them?" asked Miss Cordova satirically. In spite of a good deal of nonsense in her composition, there was an under-stratum of shrewd wisdom, inherited, no doubt, from her New England mother, and her admiration for her more brilliant friend did not blind her to certain irregularities of disposition and many weak points in Pauline's character, inseparable from her abnormal bringing up. "I wouldn't excite myself so much if I were you," continued the other. "I've learnt not to worry about men harming other men; it's when they come to harming women I think it's time to worry about them. Look at me—I don't know for certain whether Ned Stanbury's alive or not; I know Schenk's alive, although he may not last long, but I never worry about their meeting. But if Schenk came here to disturb me, or went to my mother's to get the children from her, then I might take on."

"But, my dear, everything's different in my case!" exclaimed Miss
Clairville, fretfully pacing up and down the common room.

A village dressmaker, one of the numerous Tremblays, had, in a great hurry, made her a black dress; her face showed sallow against it now, and even her hands, always conspicuously well-kept and white, looked yellow and old as they hung down at the side of her tall, straight figure, or clasped and unclasped restlessly behind her. A key to much of her present unhappy mood lay in her last exclamation; family pride, another kind of pride in her personal knowledge of the world, in her consciousness of gifts and physical attractions, the feeling that she was in every way Miss Cordova's superior, all this rendered Pauline's affairs, in her own eyes, of vastly greater importance and intrinsic excellence and interest than those of her companion. A Clairville—there could be no doubt of this—was a lady, a gentlewoman, to use an incorruptible phrase, whereas, no matter how unsmirched the simple annals of Sadie Cordova, the small farm, the still smaller shop were behind the narrow beginnings of the painstaking and pious Yankee shoemaker who retired in middle life to the country and died there. Pauline's father and brother, both weakly degenerates, could nevertheless boast of a lineage not inconsiderable for older lands, of possessions identified with the same, such as portraits and books and furniture, of connexions through marriage with the law and the militia, and, above all, of having lived on their land for very many years without doing anything, most distinguished trait of all. Hence, Pauline's remark; how could Miss Cordova fully understand or properly sympathize with the altered conditions by which the daughter of the manor was now second in importance to one of a family of menials, the flighty, giggling, half-witted Artemise-Palmyre, whose marriage to Henry Clairville was an accepted fact.

"You cannot understand," Pauline had said for the tenth or eleventh time, and Miss Cordova listened, outwardly smiling and not immediately replying.

"Do you suppose your brother's marriage was legal and binding?" she said after a while, and Pauline stopped in her walk. The idea was not altogether new.

"I fancy it must have been," she managed to say carelessly. "Dr. Renaud and his Reverence know all about it, and even if it were not, where is the money to enable me to—how do you say—contest it?"

"Wouldn't Mr. Poussette lend it to you?"

"Oh, what an idea! Do you think I would take it from him, I, a
Clairville?"

She had nearly used the once-despised prefix and called herself a De Clairville, for since Henry's death her intolerant view of his darling project had strangely altered; so many things were slipping from her grasp that she clutched at anything which promised well for the future.

"Well, I'm sure you deserve money, Pauline, from one quarter or another; you've worked hard enough for it, I know, and now I do hope your Mr. Hawtree will turn up soon and be all right, and that you'll be happily married to him and get away for a time from all these troubles. I want you should know, Pauline, that I think it was noble of you to work so hard to raise that money to keep little Angeel; yes, I call it noble, and I'm proud of you and sorry I ever thought——"

She paused and Pauline took up the unfinished phrase.

"Sorry you ever thought she was mine? I forgive you, my dear, but about my nobility, make no mistake. What I did I did, but I did it all coldly, passively, with nothing but hatred and loathing in my heart, with nothing but pride and selfishness setting me on to do it. I know this was wrong, but I could not get into any other frame of mind; I could never overcome my horror and repulsion of the whole matter. And now—it is just as bad—worse. If I thought I should have to live with her, with them, I could not stand it, Sara, I could not, I could not! Why must I be tried so, why must I suffer so? Oh, it is because I have a bad heart, a bad nature! Yes, yes, that must be it! I have a bad nature, Sara, a bad, bad nature!"

"No, no, Pauline!" said her friend soothingly, and the matter dropped.

Later they were sitting, towards evening, sewing at some item of the impalpable trousseau, Pauline alternating her spasmodic needle with reading over Mme. Prefontaine's letter and jumping up to listen down the stair.

"What do you expect's happened, anyhow?" cried Miss Cordova at last, in exasperation. "Mr. Ringfield's a clergyman! he's a perfectly moral man, and I guess that means something. What are you afraid of? Now if it was me and Schenk or Stanbury——"

Pauline's attitude and expression were alike tragic. In her cheap black dress her look of apprehensive despair was full of mournful intensity as she stood with one hand lifted and her expressive eyes fixed on shapes imaginary. Her friend's philosophy was equal to the occasion.

"Seems to me if you think so much about things that might happen but you ain't sure they have happened, you kind of make 'em happen. Sit down and be calm, for goodness sake, Pauline!"

"I can't, I can't! Oh, what's that now?"

With her hands over her heart she bounded to the top of the narrow stair.

"Reminds me of myself the other day when I thought Schenk was after me.
Do you hear anything, Pauline—you look so wild?"

"Yes, yes! Some one has arrived. Grand Dieu—which of them?
Sara—go and see!"

Miss Cordova rose and drew her friend back within the room.

"Maybe it's neither; only some one for M. Poussette."

"No, no, it is one of them and for me. I hear my name."

She sank upon a chair as footsteps were heard slowly, heavily, and somewhat unsteadily ascending the stair. The arrival was Edmund Crabbe, with the lurch of recent dissipation in his gait and his blue eyes still inflamed and bleared.

With a half-furtive, half-defiant air he advanced to Pauline, but before he could utter a word, either of justification or apology, she sprang at him with impetuous gestures and deeply frowning brows. To see her thus, in the common little room at Poussette's, clad in the plain garb of cheap mourning, yet with all the instinctive fire and grandeur of the emotional artist, was to recall her as many could, declaiming on the narrow stage of the Theatre of Novelties.

Je suis Romaine, helas! puisque Horace est Romain.
J'ai reÇevu son titre en reÇevant sa main,

or again, in the diaphanous rose-garlanded skirts of Marguerite Gautier, laying bare the secrets of her heart to her adoring lover. Oblivious of Miss Cordova, Pauline rushed at her own lover but did not embrace him.

"Oh, where is he?" she cried. "What have you done to him?—or with him? I insist upon the truth; I must know, I must know all. He followed you!"

"He did, he did. He followed me, as you say, madam, but what of that?" Crabbe stood, greatly astonished and rather mortified. In the presence of Miss Cordova, for Pauline to display such concern for the other man was, to say the least, annoying. To be dignified in his resentment was to invite ridicule, for the drink still showed in his walk, but he managed to frown and in other ways show honest astonishment and wrath. "A nice welcome!" he went on, with difficulty repressing a certain thickness of utterance and steadying himself as well as he was able, the chairs being both occupied. "If you mean the parson, if these airs and sighs, these sulks and tender concerns are for him—you may spare yourself. He is all right. Though I beg pardon—you never sulk, Pauline, whatever you do. I'll swear to that, lady dear. 'Tis good and hot and strong while it lasts, and now I'm back, give it me, for I know I deserve it. I've been at it again, Pauline. Drink, I mean, my girl." Tears stood in his eyes.

"I understand. You need explain no further. But what do you mean about Mr. Ringfield—how is he all right? Where is he? I was afraid, afraid of something happening to one of you. Sara laughs, but she doesn't know how I feel."

"And never will!" said Crabbe, giving Pauline's shoulder a clumsy, caressing pat; "Miss Cordova has her points, but she is not Us, she is not We of the grand emotional parts! Just a bundle of emotions, nerves and impulses—that's all you are, madam!"

His affection, breaking through the still thick speech and weakened movements, was irresistible; Pauline sighed and smiled, shook off her tremors and allowed herself to descend with him to the dining-room, where over supper she listened to the recital of his adventure in Montreal.

"It was the cold then, that made you, that drove you to it again!" she said thoughtfully.

"Cold, and—and—loneliness. I was lonely, Pauline, and by Heaven—if you'll really take me, lady dear, the sooner we're married the better. If your parson were in the house at this moment I should order him to perform the ceremony."

"Oh—that would not suit me! Mr. Ringfield—of course, that could not be. We must leave as soon as possible, that is all, and as this is the nineteenth, and we have arranged for the twenty-fourth, that is only four days to wait."

"Four days! I'll keep straight, I promise you, Pauline."

"And was he—was Mr. Ringfield with you much at the Hotel Champlain?
What did he do there? Why did he go?"

Crabbe, to tell the truth, was asking that same question of his brain, as he made heroic endeavours to recollect the details of his last debauch. He paused, and, with a trick characteristic of him, pushed away his plate and cup, although he had only begun his meal.

"That's what I'd like to know myself, Pauline. I was sitting at the table, smoking, and reading over some of my stuff—poor stuff it seems to me at times; however let that pass—when a knock came to the door, and I opened to our clerical friend! That's all I can remember."

"How did he look? How long did he stay? Do try and recollect. Try and answer."

Crabbe did try, but without avail.

"That's all I know, my dear girl. I must have been pretty bad."

"You must, indeed," said Miss Clairville, rising. A little of the hauteur Ringfield associated with her showed in her bearing, and as the guide drew his food again towards him, she eyed him almost with disfavour. "Then you do not know where he is, or what he went for, or how long he stayed."

"I do not, lady dear—I do not."

Pauline was deeply mystified, and perhaps her vanity was also touched; the mental spectacle of the two men fighting each other for possession of her had faded and a certain picturesqueness had gone from life. However, her marriage remained; she had four days, but only four, to make ready in anticipation of the great event which was to remove her at once and for ever from St. Ignace and Clairville, and in the light of which even Crabbe's backsliding seemed a trivial matter. She therefore returned to Sadie Cordova with restored equanimity, and Ringfield—his avowal and his present whereabouts and condition yielded to those prenuptial dreams and imaginings which pursued even so practised a coquette and talented woman of the world as the once brilliant Camille and Duchess of Gerolstein. Nevertheless, agitation was in the air. Poussette went to and fro in much and very voluble distress. The night closed in and brought no letter, no telegram from Ringfield; how then—who, who would conduct the service? It was the week of Christmas and a few more were already in the village, members of families from afar and two or three visitors.

The feast of NoËl is full of importance to all of the Romish faith, and Poussette knew of great things in preparation for the stone church on the hill of St. Jean Baptiste in the way of candles, extra music and a kind of Passion-play in miniature representing the manger, with cows and horses, wagons and lanterns, the Mother and Child, all complete. Should Ringfield not return——even as he spoke the wooden clock in the kitchen pointed to ten; the last train had passed through Bois Clair and Poussette abandoned all hope, while in order to prove his intense and abject depression of mind, he broke his promise to the minister and helped himself to some whisky.

Thus, the absence of his mentor worked this unfortunate relapse, and should Crabbe find out, there looked to be an old-time celebration at Poussette's with Pauline and Pauline's rights entirely forgotten. As it was, Miss Cordova caught the culprit before he was quite lost, and mounting guard over the bar, entered upon those duties which, once shouldered, remained hers for a considerable length of time.

"Division of labour," she said smartly, and Poussette gave a foolish smile. "You take the kitchen and I'll take the bar. Then when Maisie and Jack arrive I can look after 'em. As like as not, Maisie'll be hanging round for a drop of lager—what she could get, that is, out of the glasses—I've seen her! And don't you fuss about Sunday, Mr. Poussette! We'll get on just as well as if we had a church to go to and a sermon to listen to. Guess you won't be wanting to see yourself taking around the plate to-morrow, anyway."

Poussette, lying crumpled up in a reclining chair, watched his new friend with dawning reason and admiration.

"Fonny things happens," said he, wagging his head, "I'll go to sleep
now and wake up—just in time—you'll see—to go to church, help Mr.
Ringfield take roun' the money—oh—I'll show you, I'll show you, Miss
Cordova."

"You'll show me, will you?" said the barkeeper, absently. "What'll you do if he don't come at all? He can't come now, and you know it."

"I tell you—fonny things happens! I'll preach myself, read from the
Bible, sure."