Since the day that we had visited the Fromards’ cottage together, I had not breathed a word to her of the disclosures that had been made me there. Poor Guillaume had been taken to his last home. And the funeral _cortége_, followed by half the town, had passed our door without my making the slightest reference to the unpleasant topic which the sight brought to my mind. I had even listened with patience to the beautiful and touching discourse which Mr. Lovett had given us on that occasion, and in which he set forth the folly of the poor in not husbanding their resources against a time of want and emergency. Tessie had looked painfully shy and uneasy, whilst her father bade us all pray for the bereaved widow and orphans, but I had stood the exordium manfully, although I could have boxed Ange’s ears for dilating her eyes as though she were gazing at a saint from heaven. Yet Tessie shunned my company in the most evident manner, and was very subdued, not to say melancholy, at all seasons. Why was it so? Did she suspect me of treachery, and was afraid that, notwithstanding my promise, I should enlighten Ange upon the subject? Or had her father represented my conduct to her in his own light, and made her feel resentment on his account? I could not tell. I only knew that something had arisen between us, and we were not on the friendly terms we had been hitherto. Mr. Charteris was another defaulter, though regarding his temper I troubled myself but little. My rebuffs of him, trifling as they were, had evidently upset his equanimity; and if a gentleman who omits none of the common courtesies of society can be called rude, I should have said that Cave Charteris’s behaviour to me amounted to rudeness. Anyway, from that day he devoted himself to outdoor amusements, and scarcely seemed to be in the house for ten minutes together. Last, but not least, dear little Ange began to brood and be melancholy, in common with the rest. The season was not a healthy one, and there was a great deal of fever and sickness amongst the poor people. Perhaps this somewhat accounted for the decrease of brilliancy in her eyes, and lack of power in her limbs. Her slight delicate frame was weakened by the long hot summer, and required the dry frost of winter to brace and set it up again. There was too much feverish colour, I thought, in her cheeks for health, and too much languor in her usually active body. Tessie did not see it as I did. She said that St. Pucelle was always considered to be rather enervating in the autumn months, and Ange looked much the same as usual. From the ‘little maid’ herself I could get no satisfactory information. She had become as shy of me as her sister, and seemed quite nervous of being left in the same room.