"When the servant returned, I was conducted up the broad staircase and into a small room hung with wonderful embroideries and pictures and filled with flowers. In one corner on an easel was Brion's portrait in the uniform of an officer, while all about were other portraits--some taken when he was a child, others as a boy--a kind of sanctuary, really, in which the mother worshipped this one idol of her life." Herbert stopped, drew the tiny glass of cognac toward him, sipped its contents slowly, the tenderness of tone increasing as he went on: "She greeted me simply and kindly, and led me to a seat on the sofa beside her, where she thanked me for the trouble I had taken, her soft blue eyes fixed on mine, her gentle, high-bred features illumined with her gratitude, her silver-gray hair forming an aureole in the light of the window behind her, as she poured out her heart. Then followed question after question; she wanting every incident, every word he had uttered; what his nursing had been--all the things a mother would want to know. Altogether it was the severest ordeal I had been through since I left home--and I have had some trying ones. "For three hours I sat there, giving her minute accounts of his illness, his partial recovery, his relapse; what remedies I had used; how he failed after the fourth day; how his delirium had set in, and how at the last he had passed peacefully away. Next I described the funeral, giving a succinct account of the preparations; how we buried him on a little hill near a spring, putting a fence around the grave to keep any one from walking over it. Then came up the question of a small head-stone. This she insisted she would order cut at once and sent out to me--or perhaps one could be made ready so that I might take it with me. All this I promised, of course, even to taking it with me were there time, which, after all, I was able to do, for my steamer was delayed. And so I left her, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes fixed on mine in gratitude for all I had done for her dead son." "Oh!--the poor, dear lady!" cried madame la marquise, greatly moved, her hands tight clasped together. "Yes, I believe you--nothing in all your experience could have been as painful!" Brierley raised his head and looked at Herbert: "Rather a tight place, old man, awful tight place," and his voice trembled. "But where does the lie come in? You told her the truth, after all." "Told her the truth! I thought you understood. Why I lied straight through! There _was_ no grave--there never had been! Her son and his three black carriers had been trapped by cannibals and eaten." Madame started from her chair and clutched Herbert's hand. "Oh!--how terrible! No! you could not have told her!--I would never have liked you again if you had told her. Oh! I am so glad you didn't!" "There was nothing else to do, madame," said Herbert thoughtfully, his eyes gazing into space as if the recital had again brought the scene before him.