"Yes," said Dudu, "he got better, but never quite well again. However, he lived some years, long enough to see his boys grown up and to return--after the death of our old Monsieur and Madame--to return to his own country with his wife and sister-in-law. But before very long, while still far from an old man, he died. Then our young ladies, young no longer, came back, after a time, to their childish home; and here they lived together quietly, kind and charitable to all, cheered from time to time by the visits of Madame's two sons, out in the world now and married, and with homes of their own. And time went on gently and uneventfully, and gradually Madame's hair became quite, quite white, and Mademoiselle Eliane took to limping a little in her walk with the rheumatism, and when they slowly paced up and down the terrace it was difficult for me to think they were really my pretty young ladies with the white dresses and blue ribbons of half a century ago. For it was now just thirty-five years since the last visit of their English friend. She too, if she were alive, must be a woman of more than sixty. They had never heard of her again. In the hurry and anxiety of their last meeting they had forgotten to ask and she to give her exact address, so they could not write. She might have written to them to the old house perhaps, on the chance of it finding them; but if so, they had never got the letter. Yet they often spoke of her, and never saw the balcony at the end of the terrace without a kindly thought of those long ago days. "One evening--an autumn evening--mild and balmy, the two old ladies were slowly pacing up and down their favourite walk, when a servant came out to say that they were wanted--a lady was asking for them. But not to disturb them, he added, the visitor would be glad to see them in the garden, if they would allow it. Wondering who it could be, Madame and her sister were hesitating what to do, when a figure was seen approaching them from the house. "'I could not wait,' she said, almost before she reached them. 'I wished so much to see you once more in the old spot, dear friends;' and they knew her at once. They recognised in the bowed and worn but still sweet and lovely woman, their pretty child-friend of fifty years ago. She had come to bid them farewell, she said. She was on her way to the south--not to live but to die, for she had suffered much and her days were numbered. "'My dear husband is dead some years ago,' she said. 'But we were very happy together, which is a blessed thought. And my children--one after another they faded. So I am an old woman now and quite alone, and I am glad to go to them all. My friends wished me to go to the south, for I have always loved the sunshine, and there my little daughter died, and perhaps death will there come to me in gentler shape. But on my way, I wished to say good-bye to you, dear friends of long ago, whom I have always loved, though we have been so little together.'