The brightness of the pine knots in the vast fireplace lighted up the room vividly. The apartment seemed to have been the living-room of the family, and its disarrangement showed that the inmates had left its sheltering walls hurriedly. At one end of the room were great spinning wheels with the thread still hanging. Mr. Vance had drawn up an easy chair to one side of the odorous fire and leaned silently back in its depths apparently lost in thought. His wife was seated near him, the firelight glancing almost caressing on the rich sheen of her hair and the vivid crimson of her cheek and lip. Snowball's dusky figure flitted back and forth supplying the fire with the rich pine knots as they were required while Jeff and Feliciane were busied in the kitchen trying to get up something for a meal. Jeanne fell to studying the fair face of the woman before her wondering over and over how one so beautiful could be so cruel. "Well! Have you finished staring at me?" demanded Madame suddenly. "Have done with your impudence, girl. You make me nervous." "I beg your pardon," murmured Jeanne shrinking from the light in her aunt's eyes. "I do not wish to make you nervous. I was just thinking----" "I don't care what you are doing," said the other sharply. "I do not wish to be stared at." She sat back in her chair, and relapsed into silence. Jeanne withdrew her gaze, but it wandered unconsciously to her uncle's face. He moved uneasily, but made no comment. Presently Madame gave utterance to a harsh laugh, and looked at the girl strangely. "How would you like this for a home?" she asked abruptly. "What do you mean?" cried Jeanne. "Just what I say. How would you like to live here?" "I would not like it," replied the girl decidedly. "I like my own home best. There is no place like New York." "Perhaps you may change your mind," and Madame gave vent to a peal of unpleasant laughter. "I believe that you will have the opportunity." "What do you mean?" asked Jeanne again, but the lady's only answer was a shrug of her shoulders. A vague uneasiness filled Jeanne's mind at her strange demeanor. She kept looking at the girl with a curious, half triumphant expression, while ever and anon she laughed in that strange way that made the girl's blood chill with apprehension. She was glad when at last Mr. Vance ordered them all to retire. "There are plenty of rooms and good beds," he said. "Very likely the people left hurriedly else they would have taken them with them, or perhaps they left them because they will soon return. However it may be, we must get a good night's rest for to-morrow we have a long day's ride before us."