"Not far off," replied the medical man, sauntering easily to the bedside. "Come then, Mlle. Pauline, do your best for your brother. Take his hand. Bend your face—so. Lower, if you please! Madame will go to the other side,—a good woman, mademoiselle, a good kind woman!"
"Have I said she was anything else?" returned Pauline, stiffly obeying the doctor's instructions, but with obvious dislike in every movement. She took the seigneur's hand, she forced herself to place her head almost upon his pillow.
"You are uncomfortable, my poor Pauline! You shrink from me, you would avoid this meeting, this last scene on earth, but remember, this hour, this scene comes to all, will come, must come to you. If you marry, if you have good loving children, when this hour comes, you shall not pray in vain nor weep, for they will surround you, but I, Pauline, I have only you, you and one other."
"But that other! You have not sent for her? She is not here."
"No, not yet. I spare you that, Pauline; she will arrive later, after—I am gone. Father Rielle knows at last; he never suspected. Renaud knows; speak to her, Renaud, tell her."
Another fit of coughing shook him, and the cats, disturbed in their sleep, stood up, arching their brown backs and yawning.
"Take them off, take them away!" moaned Pauline, her eyes closed, but the seigneur shook a menacing finger.
"They do no harm," said the doctor tersely. "Keep his feet warm, I daresay."
"Not even that, Renaud, not even that. But leave them—good cats, good friends."
The cats curled up again in conscious attitudes, while from under the vast and ancient bed came a loud and insistent purring, rising and falling with triumphant, happy cadences—the song of the mother-cat, impervious to all save her immediate surroundings.