To the great wonder of the valley too, which took so much interest in the poor young Englishman, and which had already settled where to bury him, and held itself ready at any moment to weep over the news which everybody expected, the next bulletin was that Herbert was better; and from that moment he gradually, slowly mended again, toiling back by languid degrees to the hopeful though invalid state from which he had fallen. Madame de Mirfleur arrived two days after, when the improvement had thoroughly set in, and she never quite realized how near death her son had been. He was still ill enough, however, to justify her in blaming herself much for having left him, and in driving poor Reine frantic with the inference that only in his mother’s absence could he have been exposed to such a danger. She did not mean to blame Reine, whose devotion to her brother and admirable care for him she always boasted of, but I think she sincerely believed that under her own guardianship, in this point at least, her son would have been more safe. But the sweet bells of Reine’s nature had all been jangled out of tune by these events. The ordinary fate of those who look for miracles had befallen her: her miracle, in which she believed so firmly, had failed, and all heaven and earth had swung out of balance. Her head swam, and the world with it, swaying under her feet at every step she took. Everything was out of joint to Reine. She had tried to be angelically good, subduing every rising of temper and unkind feeling, quenching not only every word on her lips, but every thought in her heart, which was not kind and forbearing. But what did it matter? God had not accepted the offering of her goodness nor the entreaties of her prayers; He had changed His mind again; He had stopped short and interrupted His own work. Reine allowed all the old bitterness which she had tried so hard to subdue to pour back into her heart. When Madame de Mirfleur, going into her son’s room, made that speech at the door about her deep regret at having left her boy, the girl could not restrain herself. She burst out to Everard, who was standing by, the moment her mother was out of the room. “Oh, it is cruel, cruel!” she cried. “Is it likely that I would risk Herbert’s life--I that have only Herbert in all the world? We are nothing to her--nothing! in comparison with that--that gentleman she has married, and those babies she has,” cried poor Reine. It seemed somewhat absurd to Everard that she should speak with such bitterness of her mother’s husband; but he was kind, and consoled her. “Dear Reine, she did not blame you,” he said; “she only meant that she was sorry to have been away from you; and of course it is natural that she should care--a little, for her husband and her other children.”