These words had scarcely passed his lips when he must have regretted them. His eyelids quivered and a little chill came over him as his glance met that of his former designer. For in the latter's clear eyes he beheld, as it were, a vision of that other son, Norine's ill-fated child, who had been cast into the unknown. Then there came a pause, and amid the shrill cries of the boys and girls playing at hide-and-seek a number of little shadows flitted through the sunlight: they were the shadows of the poor doomed babes who scarce saw the light before they were carried off from homes and hospitals to be abandoned in corners, and die of cold, and perhaps even of starvation! Mathieu had been unable to answer a word. And his emotion increased when he noticed Morange huddled up on a chair, and gazing with blurred, tearful eyes at little Gervais, who was laughingly toddling hither and thither. Had a vision come to him also? Had the phantom of his dead wife, shrinking from the duties of motherhood and murdered in a hateful den, risen before him in that sunlit garden, amid all the turbulent mirth of happy, playful children? "What a pretty girl your daughter Reine is!" said Mathieu, in the hope of drawing the accountant from his haunting remorse. "Just look at her running about!--so girlish still, as if she were not almost old enough to be married." Morange slowly raised his head and looked at his daughter. And a smile returned to his eyes, still moist with tears. Day by day his adoration increased. As Reine grew up he found her more and more like her mother, and all his thoughts became centred in her. His one yearning was that she might be very beautiful, very happy, very rich. That would be a sign that he was forgiven--that would be the only joy for which he could yet hope. And amid it all there was a vague feeling of jealousy at the thought that a husband would some day take her from him, and that he would remain alone in utter solitude, alone with the phantom of his dead wife. "Married?" he murmured; "oh! not yet. She is only fourteen." At this the others expressed surprise: they would have taken her to be quite eighteen, so womanly was her precocious beauty already. "As a matter of fact," resumed her father, feeling flattered, "she has already been asked in marriage. You know that the Baroness de Lowicz is kind enough to take her out now and then. Well, she told me that an arch-millionnaire had fallen in love with Reine--but he'll have to wait! I shall still be able to keep her to myself for another five or six years at least!" He no longer wept, but gave a little laugh of egotistical satisfaction, without noticing the chill occasioned by the mention of Séraphine's name; for even Beauchêne felt that his sister was hardly a fit companion for a young girl. Then Marianne, anxious at seeing the conversation drop, began, questioning Valentine, while Gervais at last slyly crept to her knees.