Fred pretended not to hear her, as he was writing down the names of the creditors and the amount of indebtedness; but he pitied her, for with Miss Percy, who was a better judge than himself, a suspicion had been growing in his mind which boded no good for poor little Louie; and when the voice which was to do so much was tried and found wanting, because the quality which had made it so rich and musical, and the power to raise the higher notes, without huskiness or breaking, were gone, it was Fred’s arms which encircled the half fainting girl, and Fred who first tried to comfort her. “Please don’t speak to me now; go away,” she said to him when, after their return home, he found her in a little recess off from the salon, lying upon a couch in an abandonment of grief. “I can’t cry, and my throat feels like bursting. It is worse than death,” she said, at last, as he did not go away. “Everything has failed me. Father and mother dead—my home gone, and now my voice, with which I meant to do so much. It may come back, they said, but I know it never will. Something gave way in my throat when they told me, and I don’t believe I could sing a note now if my life depended upon it. I wish I had died with mother!” It was hard, and for a time nothing they could say or do comforted her, or availed to rouse her from the state of apathy into which she had fallen. It was in vain that Miss Percy said to her, “I have adopted you as my young sister. You will live with me always. I want you.” Louie only answered, “It isn’t that. It isn’t myself I care for. I can earn my own living somehow. It is the people—father’s creditors. I promised to pay them, and I never can.” She did not cry. If she had, it would have been better, and her eyes would not have looked so dry and red and unnaturally bright as they did, or her smile have been so rare and sad. As there was no longer any necessity for staying in Paris, they went to Switzerland, where, in the exhilarating atmosphere and among the grand scenery, her spirits rallied a little, and occasionally her merry laugh was heard in the châlet which they occupied, near Geneva.