Your home is in France." "At Maligny; the sweetest nook in Normandy.

'Twas my mother's birthplace, and 'twas there she died." "You have felt the loss of her, I make no doubt." "That might have been the case if I had known her," answered he.

"But as it is, I never did.

I was but two years old--she, herself, but twenty--when she died." He pulled at his pipe in silence a moment or two, his face overcast and thoughtful.

A shallower woman would have broken in with expressions of regret; Hortensia offered him the nobler sympathy of silence.