'Mademoiselle V--- came homeward, asking herself, "Can he be starving?" 'From that day he was invisible for so long a time that she thought he had gone away altogether. But one evening a note came to her, and she opened it trembling. '"I am here ill," it said, "and, as you know, alone. There are one or two little things I want done, in case my death should occur,--and I should prefer not to ask the people here, if it could be avoided. Have you enough of the gift of charity to come and carry out my wishes before it is too late?" 'Now so it was that, since seeing him possess himself of the broken cake, she had insensibly begun to feel something that was more than curiosity, though perhaps less than anxiety, about this fellow-countryman of hers; and it was not in her nervous and sensitive heart to resist his appeal. She found his lodging (to which he had removed from the Old Rooms inn for economy) to be a room over a shop, half-way up the steep and narrow street of the old town, to which the fashionable visitors seldom penetrated. With some misgiving she entered the house, and was admitted to the chamber where he lay. '"You are too good, too good," he murmured. And presently, "You need not shut the door. You will feel safer, and they will not understand what we say." '"Are you in want, Monsieur? Can I give you--" '"No, no. I merely want you to do a trifling thing or two that I have not strength enough to do myself. Nobody in the town but you knows who I really am--unless you have told?" '"I have not told . . . I thought you might have acted from principle in those sad days, even--" '"You are kind to concede that much. However, to the present. I was able to destroy my few papers before I became so weak . . . But in the drawer there you will find some pieces of linen clothing--only two or three--marked with initials that may be recognized. Will you rip them out with a penknife?" 'She searched as bidden, found the garments, cut out the stitches of the lettering, and replaced the linen as before. A promise to post, in the event of his death, a letter he put in her hand, completed all that he required of her. 'He thanked her. "I think you seem sorry for me," he murmured. "And I am surprised. You are sorry?" 'She evaded the question. "Do you repent and believe?" she asked. '"No." 'Contrary to her expectations and his own he recovered, though very slowly; and her manner grew more distant thenceforward, though his influence upon her was deeper than she knew. Weeks passed away, and the month of May arrived. One day at this time she met him walking slowly along the beach to the northward. '"You know the news?" he said. '"You mean of the rupture between France and England again?"