"It is not pleasant to hear of women suffering. I can't bear it. Your sister must have gone through a great deal."
"Oh, poor thing, yes she must. I'll not call her hard names again. And I do hope and trust the brain trouble has really left her." /
"She seemed quite well. I saw no trace whatever of the mind's being affected. It must have been a sort of temporary fever. Rose, were I you, I think I would never talk of this."
"I don't. I only said it to you. I assure you I wouldn't say a word of it to mamma to be made Empress tomorrow. She'd box my ears for me, as she used to do when I was a little girl."
Mr. St. John rose to leave. "There's nothing more you have to say, Rose?"
She knew as well as he that he alluded to Adeline. "There was nothing more, just then," she answered. "Mary Carr would, no doubt, see him later."
He shook hands with Rose and was leaving the room, when Miss Carr came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"I thought you had gone," she said. "Will you come with me and see old Madame de Beaufoy? I was in her room just now, and told her you had been here; she thought I ought to have taken you up to her; and she cried when she said how great a favourite you had been in those happy days, now gone by for ever."
With some hesitation--for he did not care to see the family again, especially on that day--Mr. St. John suffered himself to be conducted to her room. The show people were still silently jostling each other on the staircase, passing up and down it.
Madame de Beaufoy was in her chamber: it is the custom you know to receive visitors in the bed-chambers in France: a handsomely furnished room, the counterpane a blue satin, richly quilted, and the large square pillows, lying on it, of the finest cambric edged with choice Mechlin lace. As she held Mr. St. John's hand in greeting and drew him to the fire, the tears coursed freely down the fine old face.