“For shame! Madame Suzanne,” cried Giovanna, with fun sparkling in her eyes. “You, too, then, have no heart!” “This is totally different from kindness, this is spoiling the child,” cried Miss Susan. “My ivory chessmen, which were my mother’s! Take it away from him at once.” Giovanna wavered a moment between fun and prudence, then coaxing the child, adroitly with something else less valuable, got the knight from him, and replaced it on the table. Then she resumed where she had broken off. “I have reflected further that it is bad to fight in a house. You take me for your enemy, Madame Suzanne?--eh bien, I am not your enemy. I do nothing against you. I seek what is good for me, as all do.” “All don’t do it at the cost of other people’s comfort--at the cost of everything that is worth caring for in another’s life.” This Miss Susan said low, with her eyes bent on the fire, to herself rather than to Giovanna; from whom, indeed, she expected no response. “Mon Dieu! it is not like that,” cried the young woman; “what is it that I do to you? Nothing! I do not trouble, nor tease, nor ask for anything. I am contented with what you give me. I have come here, and I find it well; but you, what is it that I do to you? I do not interfere. It is but to see me one time in a day, two times, perhaps. Listen, it cannot be so bad for you to see me even two times in a day as it would be for me to go back to my belle-mère.” “But you have no right to be here,” said Miss Susan, shaking her gray dress free from the baby’s grasp, who had rolled softly off the young woman’s knee, and now sat on the carpet between them. His little babble went on all through their talk. The plaything Giovanna had given him--a paper-knife of carved ivory--was a delightful weapon to the child; he struck the floor with it, which under no possibility could be supposed capable of motion, and then the legs of the chair, on which Miss Susan sat, which afforded a more likely steed. Miss Susan had hard ado to pull her skirts from the soft round baby fingers, as the child looked up at her with great eyes, which laughed in her angry face. It was all she could do to keep her heart from melting to him; but then, _that_ woman! who looked at her with eyes which were not angry, nor disagreeable, wooing her to smile--which not for the world, and all it contained, would she do. “Always I have seen that one does what one can for one’s self,” said Giovanna; “shall I think of you first, instead of myself? But no! is there any in the world who does that? But, no! it is contrary to reason. I do my best for _me_; and then I reflect, now that I am well off, I will hurt no one. I will be friends if Madame Suzanne will. I wish not to trouble her. I will show de l’amitié for her as well as for le petit. Thus it should be when we live in one house.”