On the contrary, whoever saw her up at the first gleam of light in the east to relieve her aunt from all the cares of the _ménage_; whoever followed her first to the store‐rooms to dispense the provisions for the day, accompanied by little Frida, whom she initiated into the mysteries of housekeeping, and then to the kitchen to give directions and sometimes even lend assistance to the old and not over‐skilful cook; whoever saw her even going sometimes to market with a firm step, basket in hand, and returning with her cloak covered with dew, would not have imagined from the freshness she brought back from these matutinal walks, and the brilliancy which youth and health imparted to her complexion, that, more than once, the night had passed without sleep, and while hearing her early Mass, never neglected, she had shed so many scalding tears. Other cares, more congenial and better calculated to absorb her mind, occupied the remainder of the day. Her special talent for waiting on the sick, and the beneficent influence she exercised over them, were again brought into requisition around her uncle, and Madame Dornthal blessed the day of her return as she witnessed the evident progress of so prolonged and painful a convalescence—a progress that gave them reason to hope in the complete restoration of the professor’s faculties, if not in the possibility of his ever resuming constant or arduous labor. The young girl found these cares delightful, and her new duties towards her dear old friend Mademoiselle Josephine no less so. Josephine Leblanc’s affections had all been centred in her brother. She lived exclusively for him, and had never once thought of the possibility of surviving him. A person left alone in a house standing in a district devastated by war or fire, would not have felt more suddenly and strangely left alone than our poor old mademoiselle after the fatal blow that deprived her of her brother, so dear, so admired, and so venerated—the brother younger than herself, and in whose arms she had felt so sure of dying!