She touched her mistress on the shoulder, however, and said, 'M.

de Marsac is here.' Mademoiselle turned her head and looked at me languidly, without stirring in her chair or removing the foot she, was warming.

'Good evening,' she said.
The greeting seemed so brief and so commonplace, ignoring, as it did, both the pains and anxiety to which she had just put me and the great purpose for which we were here--to say nothing of that ambiguous parting which she must surely remember as well as I--that the words I had prepared died on my lips, and I looked at her in honest confusion.

All her small face was pale except her lips.

Her brow was dark, her eyes were hard as well as weary.