He seized the little figure from me and laid the head against his arm. The light from the billiard-room streamed over her pallid face: her violet eyes were closed and sunken: there was a grey shade about the mouth that was not to be mistaken. ‘Ange! Ange! speak to me!’ I cried, in my anguish and dismay. ‘Ange! _petite_ Ange! say you forgive me,’ chimed in the deeper tones of Cave Charteris’s voice. At that sound she opened her eyes, very, very slowly, as if the action gave her pain, and fixed them upon his. I saw the words, ‘I _forgive_,’ tremble upon the quivering lips, which closed again and then fell open as her spirit passed away upon the wings of Night! * * * * * I feel that no description I can append to this simple recital can increase its pathos. Ange died—just as I have told you—and I never looked upon the face of Cave Charteris after that night. I never wish to look upon it. He ranks in my memory as one of the worst men I ever met. Mr. Lovett arrived home on the next day, with the doctor in his train, when _petite_ Ange was lying stretched and still upon her bed, with her waxen hands filled with the autumn flowers the poor of St. Pucelle had placed in them. Her father’s grief was naturally very violent—such saintly mourners usually mourn noisily. Yet he had not considered his child’s illness of sufficient importance to oblige him to give up a dinner at Rille, which he had been pledged to attend on the previous day. I almost wondered, as I watched him bury her in the little strip of ground appropriated to those of her faith, in the Abbé Morteville’s cemetery, that he did not fall headlong on the coffin and denounce himself as Ange’s murderer. But no such idea ever entered his venerable head. He lived for several years afterwards, to talk of virtue and practice vice, and when he died, his creditors howled like hungry wolves above his grave, and had to recoup themselves by abusing him for the rest of their lives. Some few got their money—those to whom I had promised it in the courtyard—but their demands were but as a drop in the ocean. Mr. Warrington’s advent in St. Pucelle was a terrible blow to Mr. Lovett, especially when his legal research on my behalf resulted in the discovery that a large portion of my little patrimony had been wasted or spent. But I would not let him prosecute my guardian, for Tessie’s sake. I felt that she had sorrows enough to bear, poor girl, without this open disgrace being added to them. By the time that Mr. Lovett died, my Armand’s term of probation in Algiers was ended, and he had got his own again, so I made Tessie come and live with us.