At first she only had slight pains in the stomach.
Then her stomach began to swell and she suffered, oh, so dreadfully! it made one cry to see her.

Her stomach has gone down now, only she's worn out; she has got so thin that she has no legs left her, and she's wasting away with continual sweating." Then, as Rose, raising her eyelids, began to moan, her mother leant over her, distracted and turning pale.

"What is the matter, my jewel, my treasure ?" she asked.

"Are you thirsty ?" But the little girl was already closing her dim eyes of a hazy sky-blue hue, and did not even answer, but relapsed into her torpor, quite white in the white frock she wore--a last coquetry on the part of her mother, who had gone to this useless expense in the hope that the Virgin would be more compassionate and gentle to a little sufferer who was well dressed, so immaculately white.
There was an interval of silence, and then Madame Vincent inquired: "And you, madame, it's for yourself no doubt that you are going to Lourdes?
One can see very well that you are ill." But the lady, with a frightened look, shrank woefully into her corner, murmuring: "No, no, I am not ill.

Would to God that I were! I should suffer less." Her name was Madame Maze, and her heart was full of an incurable grief.
After a love marriage to a big, gay fellow with ripe, red lips, she had found herself deserted at the end of a twelvemonth's honeymoon.