middle age, with a port-wine stain on her face,
was as good as her word, and bustled away.

Babette took Lily into a charming little
bedroom, all rustling in white dimity draperies. Ah!
so different from that dreadful hole at the
Marcassin's. She showed Lily a coquettish little bed,
and a wardrobe where her linen and clothes were
arranged; and then, to the girl's great astonishment,
the homely Babette sat down on the bed
and began to cry.

"Don't mind me," she said in French, wiping
her eyes. "I'm not going to hate you or to be
jealous of you. But I am low-spirited this
morning. Je pensais apres mon homme la-bas:
I was thinking about my husband, yonder."

Lily could not help thinking Babette a very
strange woman, but she forbore to vex her by
interruption.

"Is it through——" Babette was about to say
"charity," but she checked herself; "is it pour
l'amour du bon Dieu that you are going to stay
with us?"

Lily felt herself blushing crimson, but she
answered steadily: "I am quite alone, and poor,
and was very unhappy where I lived, till M.
l'Abbé Chatain brought me away: and I know
that Madame de Kergolay is very charitable."

The homely woman had a brawny fist. She
doubled it, and brought it down with a thump
on the bed.

"Charitable?" she repeated. "She's a saint.
Don't think I wish to shame you. I am the
lowest of the low, a creature of shame, la
dernière des dernières;" and she began to weep
afresh.

Lily did her best to console her, but the most
efficacious balsam to be applied to a wounded
spirit seemed, in the case of the homely woman,
to be the doubling of her fist again. She brought
it down with renewed force on the counterpane.

"Look you well here, little one," she
exclaimed. "This house has more mercy in it
than the Hotel-Dieu—than Bicêtre—than any
house on earth. My man, my husband, it is very
certain was a villain—Claude Gallifet, called
Claquedents. An abominable man. Do you see
that scar on my forehead? That was where
he knocked me down with his adze, as a butcher
knocks down the bœuf-gras. Observe it well. The
blow went through my skull as though it had been
of paper. Do you see this gap in my mouth? That
is where Claquedents knocked three of my teeth
down my throat. My breath is almost as short as
the Dame Prudence's. But I have no asthma.
I pant because Claude jumped on me, and broke
two of my ribs. But I loved that man there.
Do you understand?"

Lily was bewildered, and knew not what to
say. She bowed her head.

"If he was bad," the woman continued, "I
was bad. If he was a robber, I was a receiver of
stolen goods. I tell you I loved him. Well! If
he did commit the burglary by night, I helped him.
I made the skeleton keys for him, and the list
slippers, so that he should not be heard. Ce n'est
pas moi qui l'ai conseillé de tuer le bourgeois,"
she muttered, in a lower tone, and halted, and
looked at Lily, and breathed hard.

The girl was shuddering.

"The bourgeois did not die," Babette went
on, gloomily. "Otherwise, Claquedents would
have been guillotined. Well, they sent him to
Toulon for life. He is there now, with a red
nightcap, and chained to another villain. N'en
parlons plus."

"I was tried with him," she resumed. "They
were merciful to me because I was a woman,
and I had but two years' seclusion. I came out
of prison to do what? To starve. 'Get up,' said
the police one day. 'Lie down,' they cried the
next. 'Go here, go there, where are your papers?'
I had none, and no bread. I tell you I had no
bread. They would not take me in at the
hospital. I was so strong, they said. I had
had a child. That died while I was in the
prison. I begged a sou one night, and paid the
toll on to the Pont des Arts to drown myself.
The Abbé Chatain met me. He gave me money
for a bed. He told Madame about me. I was
received in an institution where saints, such as
she, gather together wretches such as I. I
worked very hard. I showed that I could be
honest. Good God! I never stole anything but
when I wanted bread, or when my man told me.
At last I came here. I am housekeeper. I have
the care of the plate. I could strangle Madame,
who is as helpless as a child, when I put her to
bed. Vieux Sablons does not know my story.
The Dame Prudence, even, only knows, from the
abbé, that I was poor. Nothing more. But I
tell you—because you are young and have been
miserable—think of me, and bless God that you
ever came into this house."

"And your husband?" Lily said, lifting her
great eyes in wonderment to the woman's face.

"Speak no more of him," she returned. "If
he were to escape, or to be released, I declare
that I would kill myself. I love him, and a
month after we had met we should be at the
Dépôt of the Préfecture again, for robbery. You
will never hear anything more about this from
me. Go! I see you are good. I am not about
to be jealous of you." And Babette got off the
bed, smoothed out the indentations made by her
fist, and very composedly proceeded to fill the
ewer from a large brass pitcher.

When Lily was left alone, she ventured to open
the wardrobe, and found that the mean and
patched apparel she had brought from the
Pension Marcassin had been supplemented by a store
of linen, morning wrappers, and other feminine
gear, which, to her unaccustomed eyes, appeared
inexpressibly spruce and smart. There was little
finery among the stock; there were neither silks
nor satins; but to the whilom Cinderella the few
drawers seemed to contain the treasures of the
Indies. She had never seen such nice clothes
since the well-remembered afternoon when Cutwig
and Co. fitted her out.

Presently came Vieux Sablons with a tap at