“There was the sound of soft, trailing garments on the stairs, and Eugenie drew her tall figure to its full height, and tossed her head proudly as Anna entered the room, a graceful little creature, with a tint of the sun on her wavy hair, a faint flush on her cheeks, and the purity of her complexion heightened by the color of her dress. And still she was not a child, for the woman was stamped in every lineament, and shone in the blue eyes she bent so curiously upon the guests, as, one by one, they gathered around her to be presented. And Anna received them graciously, and welcomed them to the chateau, which, she said, would be pleasanter for having them there. “‘You must be often very lonely living here alone so much,’ Eugenie said to her, and instantly the great blue eyes, which had been scanning her so curiously, filled with tears, and the sweet voice was inexpressibly sad which replied: “‘Oh, you don’t know how lonely.’ “It was long since Eugenie Arschinard had felt a throb of anything like kindly pity for any one; but there was something in Anna’s face and Anna’s eyes which struck a chord she had thought stilled forever, and brought back a wave of memory which shook her, for an instant, like a tempest, and made her grow faint and weak before this woman she had meant to hate. Years ago, before Eugenie Arschinard was the woman she was now, she had loved a young half-sister with all the intensity of her strong, passionate nature, and loved her the more for having had the care of her from the time her first wailing cry echoed through the chamber of the dying mother. For this child Eugenie had toiled and denied herself, and gone without sufficient food that the little one might be daintily clothed and fed on delicacies. Then, in an unlucky hour, Eugenie went to Paris to make her fortune as a milliner, and get a home for the young girl growing each day more and more beautiful. But before that home was made Eugenie’s brilliant beauty had been her ruin, and she would not bring her sister into the tainted atmosphere of her world. “The glamour of Haverleigh’s love and money was in its freshness, and in her intoxication she forgot everything else until there came a terrible awakening, and she heard that ‘_La Petite_,’ as she called her sister, had left her home with a stranger, and gone no one knew whither, or whether for good or bad. Then for a time the fairy palace off the Champs d’Elysees was closed, while Eugenie, maddened and remorseful, sought far and near for traces of _La Petite_, but sought in vain, and after many weeks she returned to her home and life in Paris, gayer, more reckless than ever, but with a pain in her heart which never left her for a moment. “Time passed on till more than a year was gone, and then she heard from the gray-haired father at home that in a roundabout way, which he nevertheless felt to be reliable, tidings had come to him of _La Petite’s_ death, though how she died or where he did not know.