From this day forth, when Jack was not at home he was at the old doctor’s, who lived in a house in no degree better than that of his neighbors, and only distinguished from them by the words Night-Bell on a brass plate above a small button at the side of the door. The walls were black with age. Here and there, however, an observant eye could see that some attempts had been made to rejuvenate the mansion; but everything of that nature had been interrupted on the day of their great sorrow, and the old people had never had the heart to go on with their improvements since; an unfinished summer-house seemed to say, with a discouraged air, “What is the use?” The garden was in a complete state of neglect. Grass grew over the walks, and weeds choked the fountain. The human beings in the house had much the same air. From Madame Rivals, who, eight years after her daughter’s death, still wore the deepest of black, down to little Cécile, whose childish face had a precocious expression of sorrow, and the old servant who for a quarter of a century had shared the griefs and sorrows of the family,—all seemed to live in an atmosphere of eternal regret. The doctor, who kept up a certain intercourse with the outer world, was the only one who was ever cheerful. To Madame Rivals, Cécile was at once a blessing and a sorrow, for the child was a perpetual reminder of the daughter she had lost. To the doctor, on the contrary, it seemed that the little girl had taken her mother’s place, and sometimes, when he was with her alone, he would give way to a loud and merry laugh, which would be quickly silenced on meeting his wife’s sad eyes, full of astonished reproach. Little Cécile’s life was by no means a gay one. She lived in the garden, or in a large room where a door, that was always closed, led to the apartment that had once been her mother’s, and which was full of the souvenirs of that short life. Madame Rivals alone ever entered this room, but little Cécile often stood on the threshold, awed and silent. The child had never been sent to school, and this isolation was very bad for her; she needed the association of other children. “Let us ask little D’Argenton here,” said her grandfather: “the boy is charming!” “Yes; but who knows anything about these people? Whence do they come?” answered his wife. “Who knows them?” “Everybody, my dear. The husband is very eccentric, certainly, but he is an artist, or a journalist rather, and they are privileged. The woman is not quite a lady, I admit, but she is well enough. I will answer for their respectability.” Madame Rivals shook her head. She had but slight confidence in her husband’s insight into character, and sighed in an ostentatious way. Old Rivals colored guiltily, but returned in a moment to his original idea. “The child will be ill if she has not some change. Besides, what harm could possibly happen?”