Mère Girauds Little Daughter | Page 5

fairly bewildered at the news it heard the next day. Mère
Giraud had gone to Paris to visit Madame Legrand--had actually gone,
sending her little servant home, and shutting up her small, trim cottage.
"Let us hope that Madame Legrand will receive her as she expects to be

received," said Annot. "For my part I should have preferred to remain
in St. Croix. Only yesterday Jeanne Tallot told us that she had no
intention of going."
"She will see wonderful things," said the more simple and amiable. "It
is possible that she may be invited to the Tuileries, and without doubt
she will drive to the Bois de Boulogne in Madame Legrand's carriage,
with servants in livery to attend her. My uncle's sister's son, who is a
valet de place in a great family, tells us that the aristocracy drive up and
down the Champs Éllysées every afternoon, and the sight is
magnificent."
But Mère Giraud did not look forward to such splendors as these. "I
shall see my Laure as a great lady," she said to herself. "I shall hold her
white hands and kiss her cheeks."
The roar of vehicles, and the rush and crowd and bustle bewildered her;
the brightness and the rolling wheels dazzled her old eyes, but she held
herself bravely. People to whom she spoke smiled at her patois and her
innocent questions, but she did not care.
She found a fiacre which took her to her destination; and when, after
she had paid the driver, he left her, she entered the wide doors with a
beating heart, the blood rising on her cheek, and glowing through the
withered skin.
"Madame Legrand," she said a little proudly to the concierge, and the
woman stared at her as she led her up the staircase. She was so eager
that she scarcely saw the beauty around her,--the thick, soft carpets, the
carved balustrades, the superb lamps. But when they stopped before a
door she touched the concierge upon the arm.
"Do not say my name," she said. "I am her mother."
The woman stared at her more than ever.
"It is not my place to announce you," she said. "I only came up because
I thought you would not find the way."

She could not have told why it was or how it happened, but when at last
she was ushered into the salon a strange sense of oppression fell upon
her. The room was long and lofty, and so shadowed by the heavy
curtains falling across the windows that it was almost dark.
For a few seconds she saw nobody, and then all at once some one rose
from a reclining chair at the farther end of the apartment and advanced
a few steps toward her--a tall and stately figure, moving slowly.
"Who?"--she heard a cold, soft voice say, and then came a sharp cry,
and Laurel white hands were thrown out in a strange, desperate gesture,
and she stopped and stood like a statue of stone.
"Mother--mother--mother!" she repeated again and again, as if some
indescribable pain shook her.
If she had been beautiful before, now she was more beautiful still. She
was even taller than ever,--she was like a queen. Her long robe was of
delicate gray velvet, and her hair and throat and wrists were bound with
pearls and gold. She was so lovely and so stately that for a moment
Mère Giraud was half awed, but the next it was as if her strong mother
heart broke loose.
"My Laure!" she cried out. "Yes, it is I, my child--it is I, Laure;" and
she almost fell upon her knees as she embraced her, trembling for very
ecstasy.
But Laure scarcely spoke. She was white and cold, and at last she
gasped forth three words.
"Where is Valentin?"
But Mère Giraud did not know. It was not Valentin she cared to see.
Valentin could wait, since she had, her Laure. She sat down beside her
in one of the velvet chairs, and she held the fair hand in her own. It was
covered with jewels, but she did not notice them; her affection only
told her that it was cold and tremulous.
"You are not well, Laure?" she said. "It was well that my dream warned

me to come. Something is wrong."
"I am quite well," said Laure. "I do not suffer at all."
She was so silent that if Mère Giraud had not had so much to say she
would have been troubled \ as it was, however, she was content to pour
forth her affectionate speeches one after another without waiting to be
answered.
"Where is Monsieur Legrand?" she ventured at last.
"He is," said Laure, in a hesitant voice,--"he is in Normandy."
"Shall I not see him?" asked Mère Giraud.
"I am