“‘_Die! Jamais!_ You shall go home—back to the leetle house, and the wax, and the leather, and the smell-bad, and the mother who is _not_ dead. I not believe that, it is one part of the great whole; _la mere_ not dead, and you shall see her yet. Give me the—the—what you say—_post restante—l’addresse_ of the little _village_, and I write _toute de suite_. Trust me, _ma petite enfant_. Trust Eugenie, for the sake of Agatha.’ “It seemed to Anna that when Eugenie attempted English she was softer and more womanly in her way of expressing herself; was very pretty and sweet, and Anna began to feel a degree of trust in and dependence upon her which astonished herself. Eugenie remained at the chateau a week longer, but never again took any part in the gayeties which without her suggestive and ruling spirit, were inexpressibly flat and stale. To Haverleigh she was cold and distant to a degree, which angered him sorely and made him cross, and irritable, and moody; but he was far from suspecting the cause of Eugenie’s changed demeanor, and never dreamed of connecting it in any way with Agatha, or suspected the intimacy springing up between his wife and Eugenie. “It was no part of Eugenie’s plan that he should do so, and though she saw Anna often in the privacy of her apartment, where she spent much of her time, she scarcely ever spoke to her in the presence of Haverleigh, except to pass the compliments of the day, and when at last she left the chateau for good, there was a simple hand-shake and _au revoir_ between herself and Anna, who, nevertheless, grew more cheerful and happy, but kept, even from Madame Verwest, the hope she had of a release, or at least of hearing once more from home. How this would be accomplished she did not know, but she trusted to Eugenie’s ready wit and ingenuity in deceiving Haverleigh, who lingered at the chateau until November and who grew so moody, and unreasonable, and tyrannical that, popular as he usually was with his servants, every one hailed his final departure with delight. “When next Anna heard from him he told her of a dangerous and most unaccountable illness which had come upon Eugenie the very day she reached Paris. “‘She did not go straight home,’ he wrote, ‘but took a roundabout way through Normandy, where in some obscure place she spent a week with her father, who, it seems, died while she was there. His death or something upset her terribly, and she has suffered, and is still suffering, with a nervous fever which makes her perfectly dreadful at times—out of her head in fact—and she will not see one of her old friends. Even I, who have known her so long, am forbidden the house, her nurse telling me that she actually knows when I step on the stair and instantly grows fearfully excited. So, lest I make her worse, I only send now twice a day to inquire how she is. They say she talks a great deal of _La Petite_, and Anna when delirious. That Anna is you, of course, but who is _Petite_? Do you know?’