"I have now come to a point at which I earnestly wish my mother would herself take up the pen. Not that there remain many facts or events to relate, but the crowning one--that of her marriage to my dear father--I could wish her to describe. At present--so shortly after his death--she says she could hardly bear to recall the details of those happy days, in which she gradually learnt to love her faithful Pierrot, with the trusting affection of a woman for the man she would choose for her husband. But in the future, I have good hopes she may be persuaded to do so, and also to relate how Pierre, frightened at first at his own audacity, could scarcely believe it possible that his beautiful Edmee, his `little lady,' could think herself honoured by his deep and fervent love. _I_ cannot altogether sympathise in this great humility on the part of my dear father; but then I have known him, and the rare beauty of his character; then, too, I am quite as proud of my Germain ancestry as of the long lines of Valmont and Sarinet. And nothing gratifies my mother so much as when I say so. "In the meantime I may give a few particulars that may be of interest to those who will read these pages. Pierre and Edmee never saw poor Marguerite Ribou again; but years after they had news of her death--she died peacefully--from the kind priest in Paris, who had never lost sight of her, and who restored to Edmee the jewels and money the poor girl had so honestly kept for her. And thanks to him--for neither my father or mother ever entered Paris again--the little portrait, which had been the means of Pierre's finding Edmee and her mother, was recovered from the old dealer in antiquities, and placed, with the other relics of her child-life, in the best parlour at Belle Prairie Farm, where I trust it may be admired and loved by many generations of the descendants of Pierre and Edmee Germain. And now--" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Madame Marceau stopped suddenly, and looked up. "What is it, mother dear? Go on, please--that is if you are not tired," said several voices. "No, dears, I am not tired. I have not read as much to-day as the two last times." (For though I have not interrupted the course of the story to say so, it will be readily understood that the reading of the old manuscript had occupied several holiday or Sunday evenings). "But," she went on, "I have stopped simply because there is no more to read! Those two words, `and now,' are the last of the manuscript." "Oh dear!"--"What a pity!"--"Did our great-grandmother never write any more to it, as our grandmother hoped she would?" exclaimed the children.