The entrance of Cousin Marianne, followed by a neat maid bearing a tray of good things, interrupted our conversation. With that gentle, noiseless quickness, which was one of her characteristics, she spread a little table with a clean white cloth and arranged thereon the tempting dishes she had caused to be prepared. She also set out two cups and saucers of delicate china-ware—such as David had once brought to my mother from Dieppe. A signal dismissed the maid, who, however, presently returned carrying a small silver coffee-pot—the first one I had ever seen; for though coffee had come into quite common use in London and Paris, it had not yet penetrated to Normandy. "I have made you a small pot of coffee, cousin," said she. "My brother learned to like it in London, and though I do not approve of its constant use, yet tempered with cream it is refreshing and wholesome when one is weak or tired. Now I shall leave you to wait upon yourselves, and do try to eat. It will be hard, I dare say, but you will be the better for it." "Why does Cousin Marianne make one think of poor Grace?" said I. "She is not in the least like her." "It is the Cornish accent," said my mother. "Grace always retained it, and so does our cousin, though she has lived so long abroad. But, my child, you do not eat a mouthful. Are you not hungry?" "I thought I was," I answered; "but somehow I do not wish to eat now the food is before me. But I like the coffee," I added, sipping it with great satisfaction. "Do you not think it is good, maman?" "Very pleasant indeed. I have tasted it before when it was a new thing even in London; but you must not drink much of it without eating, or it will keep you awake. Take one of these saffron-cakes. They are like Mrs. Grace's." I tried to eat to please my mother, but with all my efforts I did not succeed very well. Whether owing to the coffee or because I had slept so much during the day, I cannot say, but I passed great part of the night lying broad awake and going over and over again, even to the minutest circumstance, the events of my life. They seemed to pass before me in endless succession, from the very earliest things I could remember in Jeanne Sablot's cottage, and that without any volition of my own, so that it was as if some one unfolded before me a set of pictures, and I lay and looked at them. When at last I fell asleep, it was to be tormented by poor Lucille's messenger, the bluebottle fly, which kept buzzing round my head, saying something which I could not understand, though it was of the last importance that I should do so. Then I was being built up by my father and Andrew in one of the niches in the sepulchral vault, while I struggled in vain to tell them that I was not dead. Oh, how glad I was to wake at last and see the cheerful sun just darting his first beams into my casement!