Also, she had the aroma of remembrance about her from another side--remembrance when she had been madame's chosen friend and favorite, and the unconscious chaperon, poor dear! who had made his daily visits to Lionnet possible and respectable. He pitied her a little now when he thought of how he had used her as Virginie's hood and his own mask then; and he pitied her so much that he took it on his conscience, as a duty which he owed her and the right, to make her happy at last. Yes, it was manifestly his duty--unquestionably the right thing to do. The petition must be signed, the suppliant raised; Ahasuerus must exalt his Esther, his loving, faithful, humble Esther; and when inclination models itself as duty the decision is not far off. CHAPTER XXXII. PALMAM QUI NON MERUIT. All North Aston rang with the story of little Fina's peril, Josephine's admirable devotion and Leam's shameful neglect--so shameful as to be almost criminal. It was the apportionment of judgment usual with the world. The one who had incurred no kind of risk, and had done only what was pleasant to her, received unbounded praise, while the one who was of practical use got for her personal peril and discomfort universal blame. They said she had allowed the child to run into danger by her own carelessness, and then had done nothing to save her: and they wondered beneath their breath if she had really wished the little one to be drowned. She was an odd girl, you know, they whispered from each to each--moody, uncomfortable, and unlike any one else; and though she had certainly behaved admirably to little Fina, so far as they could see, yet it was not quite out of the nature of things that she should wish to get rid of the child, who, after all, was the child of no one knows whom, and very likely spoilt and tiresome enough. But no one said this aloud. They only whispered it to each other, their comments making no more noise than the gliding of snakes through the evening grass. As for Fina, she suffered mainly from a fit of indigestion consequent on the shower of sweetmeats which fell on her from all hands as the best consolation for her willful little ducking known to sane men and women presumably acquainted with the elements of physiology. She was made restless, too, from excitement by reason of the multiplicity of toys which every one thought it incumbent on him and her to bestow; for it was quite a matter for public rejoicing that she had not been drowned, and Josephine, as her reputed savior, leapt at a bound to the highest pinnacle of popular favor. It made not the slightest difference in the estimation of these clumsy thinkers that the thing for which Josephine was praised was a pure fiction, just as the thing for which Leam was condemned was a pure fiction. Society at North Aston had the need of hero-worship on it at this moment, and a mythic heroine did quite as well for the occasion as a real one.