I am sure, if bright-haired Ange regretted once during those few hours that she had vowed her lips should remain sealed until the revelation of the household mystery was close at hand, she must have regretted it fifty times; but she made up for her self-imposed reticence by chattering without ceasing to Madame Marmoret in the Wallon dialect. That amiable individual appeared to accept the impending change with wonderful tranquillity, although it was certainly putting her to a great deal of extra trouble. I did, indeed, once overhear her grumbling that she hoped things might turn out as they expected: that, for her own part, she had lost hope altogether, and never anticipated any better lot than to end her days in the poorhouse. I saw Tessie, on that occasion, leave the work on which she was engaged, and walking up to the cross-grained old servant, put her arms about her neck and beg her to be patient. Why was Tessie always the comforter, I thought, when Madame Marmoret’s ebullitions of temper had reached their culminating point? Ange, who was all love and pity for the poor, and whom Madame had reared from an infant—Ange, I should have imagined would have been the readier of the two to soothe and console her. But the little maid, notwithstanding her universal charity abroad, never seemed to realise that any one within the house could stand in need of consolation. They lived under the same roof as her father—that father whom she credited with being the best, most lovable, most honourable, and most holy creature upon earth: and what could they possibly want more? I believe that is really the way in which innocent Ange thought of us all. I have heard her say that Tessie and she were sure to be married some day, because if men did not wish to marry them for their own sakes, they would do so for the glory of being able to call Mr. Lovett by the name of ‘father.’ And this without a shade of coquetry or self-consciousness, passing over the unclouded mirror of her lovely face. The remainder of the _jour de fête_ passed very quietly; but I could see, as the afternoon waned, that the portentous secret was growing too big to be held much longer in the ‘durance vile’ of silence. Even a visit from the Abbé Morteville (one of the pleasantest and most intellectual of our acquaintances), with a beautiful little statuette, which he had had sent all the way from Paris to place on Ange’s mantelpiece, could not do more than engage her attention for the few minutes that it endured.