It was a marvelous life Mere Giraud lived during the next few days. Certainly she could not complain that she was not treated with deference and affection. She wore the silk dress every day; she sat at the wonderful table, and a liveried servant stood behind her chair; she drove here and there in a luxurious carriage; she herself, in fact, lived the life of an aristocrat and a great lady. Better than all the rest, she found her Laure as gracious and dutiful as her fond heart could have wished. She spent every hour with her; she showed her all her grandeurs of jewelry and _toilette_; she was not ashamed of her mother, untutored and simple as she might be. "Only she is very pale and quiet," she remarked to Valentin once; "even paler and more quiet than I should have expected. But then we know that the rich and aristocratic are always somewhat reserved. It is only the peasantry and provincials who are talkative and florid. It is natural that Laure should have gained the manner of the great world." But her happiness, poor soul, did not last long, and yet the blow God sent was a kindly one. One morning as they went out to their carriage Laure stopped to speak to a woman who crouched upon the edge of the pavement with a child in her arms. She bent down and touched the little one with her hand, and Mere Giraud, looking on, thought of pictures she had seen of the Blessed Virgin, and of lovely saints healing the sick. "What is the matter?" asked Laure. The woman looked down at the child and shivered. "I do not know," she answered hoarsely. "Only we are ill, and God has forsaken us. We have not tasted food for two days." Laure took something from her purse and laid it silently in the child's small, fevered hand. The woman burst into tears. "Madame," she said, "it is a twenty-franc piece." "Yes," said Laure gently. "When it is spent come to me again," and she went to her carriage. "My child," said Mere Giraud, "it is you who are a saint. The good God did wisely in showering blessings upon you." A few days longer she was happy, and then she awakened from her sleep one night, and found Laure standing at her bedside looking down at her and shuddering. She started up with an exclamation of terror. "_Mon Dieu!_" she said. "What is it?" She was answered in a voice she had never heard before,--Laure's, but hoarse and shaken. Laure had fallen upon her knees, and grasped the bedclothes, hiding her face in the folds. "I am ill," she answered in this strange, changed tone. "I am--I am cold and burning--I am--dying." In an instant Mere Giraud stood upon the floor holding her already insensible form in her arm'. She was obliged to lay her upon the floor while she rang the bell to alarm the servants. She sent for Valentin and a doctor. The doctor, arriving, regarded the beautiful face with manifest surprise and alarm. It was no longer pale, but darkly flushed, and the stamp of terrible pain was upon it.