“To-day, this very day, we shall see your father, so good, so learned, so wonderfully beautiful! Ah, Marguerite, my child! I almost feel his last kiss on my lips, my forehead, my hair. You were clinging to me, one arm about my neck, the other reaching forth to him. ‘Only a few days,’ he said, ‘and I may come back covered with honors. The King of France has sent for me—Louis has learned that Gosner is wise, that he has a knowledge of wonderful things. Perhaps, my wife, we may yet lay up honors and riches for our little one.’ Then in this beautiful hope he would come back and embrace us again. I was weeping, for a strange, black presentiment of evil crept over me; but you sent kisses after him, fluttering that little hand in the air like a butterfly. He waved his hand in adieu; I saw him through my blinding tears; I watched him depart. His voice sounded like a knell through my whole being; the sorrows of an eternal parting fell upon me. Then I felt your arms around my neck, and the soft pressure of your lips on my face; your tiny hands, soft and white as rose-leaves brushed away my tears. Oh! how I loved you, how I do love you—_his_ child, his child and mine.” She threw her arms around the girl in a passion of love; then she pushed the young creature away, and looked down in her face with a wild consciousness of the great change that had fallen upon her. Beautiful as the face was, it seemed to fill her with infinite regret. “But his child is gone,” she cried out; “this is a woman who holds up her arms and tries to comfort me. Gosner will not know her; he will not know me. This child is the creature I was when he left us, young, beautiful, delicate. In her he may recognize the woman he loved; but in me what will he find, lines of sorrow where he left dimples, golden hair turned to ashes, which long years of suffering strews upon the head. Alas, alas! this is not all joy; these cruel people have dug a gulf between us since I was like you, my child. When we meet, the young man and that girlish wife will have disappeared forever. A man and a woman will clasp hands, broken down with sorrow, each carrying a weight of years that cruelty has rendered a dead blank. The king has pardoned him, the queen has smiled on you; but is there in all their royalty power enough to take back the awful wrong that has been done to us?” Marguerite trembled and grew pale in her mother’s arms. Never, since her first remembrance, had she seen that look of wild excitement on her face, or heard that thrill of agony in her voice. And this was the morning that should have been so resplendent in their lives. What did it mean? Was it possible that the woman who had suffered so long and struggled so bravely was lost to all sense of enjoyment? Had sorrow absolutely killed hope in her bosom? “But, mamma, you would both have grown older even if this great calamity had not fallen upon you,” said the young girl, striving to reassure her mother.