They drank the bride’s health and gave her all good wishes. The men considered André very lucky and he thought himself so, but Renée’s fortune scarcely counted, since he would make one for himself. Everything seemed sweet and solemn to Renée, and she was awed in a sacred sort of way as this new life unfolded before her. They walked in quite a procession afterward. Gaspard Denys had Madame Gardepier. They talked a little about the bridegroom, then she said: “Monsieur Denys, you have done a faithful duty toward the child. You will miss her much. One can never be quite the same again. Is it true you are going to New Orleans also?” “Yes, madame. I have not been there for years.” She had hoped it was not so. If he were lonely, he might turn to others for consolation. And if the child went out of his life—— “But will her husband agree to share her love? Husbands are jealous sometimes,” she commented rather gayly. “He is like a son to me, and he knows it. You see, I am old enough to be his father also.” “Ah, M’sieu Denys, you should have had children of your very own, and a woman to love in your home. You have such a noble and tender heart you could have made some one so happy.” Her heart beat as she said it. Why could he not be roused to the hope even now? “I think you know that I loved the child’s mother, and that we were unfairly separated. If she had lived—but she died. And when I heard the little one was sent across the sea by her father, who had small regard for her, it was as if her mother, leaning over the wall of heaven, called to me, and I did what I knew would set her heart at rest.” “But she had heaven and all the saints. And in that land of the blest one cannot long for human loves. It is to those left on earth to whom they are precious,” she returned, with a little longing in her tone. She had been waiting for Renée’s marriage to take her out of his life. Why should the child have so much? “I think they know, those blessed ones. Ah, madame, if you had been dying, instead of your husband, and leaving the little one, would you not have pleaded with the very angels that some one might be raised up to care for her? And if that had been one to whom she would be doubly dear! So the child in one sense has been like my own.” And always her rival, Barbe Gardepier felt. Her last hope seemed to drop as one lets fall a withered flower that has been sweet and is still freighted with some dear remembrances. They paused at her sister’s house. “You will come in and say good-by to-morrow?” “Yes,” and he bowed. Why should things go so wrong in the world? Renée Freneau defrauded of a lifelong happiness, of life itself, and she who had seen such a blissful possibility twice in her short life shut out from what would have been her brightest happiness. He went his way thoughtfully. He had been so long used to a man’s liberty that he did not care to enchain himself with matrimony. And surely he would give Renée no rival to her children.