For a moment Louis' hang-dog face--none the handsomer for the mark of the Syndic's cane--spelt refusal. Then he changed his mind. He nodded sulkily. "Very well," he said. "But it is raining, and I have no great wish to--Hush! What is that?" He raised his hand in the attitude of one listening and his eyes sought his companion's. "What is that? Did you not hear something--like a scream upstairs?" "I hear something like a fool downstairs!" Claude retorted gruffly. "But it was--I certainly heard something!" Louis persisted, raising his hand again. "It sounded----" "If we are to go, let us go!" Claude cried with temper. "Come, if you want me to go! It is not my expedition," he continued, moving noisily hither and thither in search of his staff and cloak. "It is your affair, and--where is my cap?" "I should think it is in your room," Louis answered meekly. "It was only that I thought it might be Anne. That there might be----" "Two fools in the house instead of one!" Claude broke in, emerging noisily, and slamming the door of his closet behind him. "There, come, and we may hope to be back to supper some time to-night! Do you hear?" And jealously shepherding the other out of the house, he withdrew the key when both had passed the threshold. Locking the door on the outside, he thrust the key under it. "There!" he said, smiling at his cleverness, "now, who enters--knocks!" CHAPTER XIV. "AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!" In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril. Almost forgotten by the world below, which had its own cares, its alarums and excursions, its strivings and aims, they lived for one another. The weak health of the one and the brave spirit of the other had gradually inverted their positions; and the younger was mother, the elder, daughter. Yet each retained, in addition, the pious instincts of the original relation. To each the welfare of the other was the prime thought. To give the other the better portion, be it of food or wine, of freedom from care, or ease of mind, and to take the worse, was to each the ground plan of life, as it was its chiefest joy.