It was but an added dread to her other anxieties, among which Amelie's pallor and abstraction must be numbered.
Amelie was just seventeen; her childhood had been that of a happy laughing girl, joyous and healthy.

The death of her father had cast a black veil over her youth and gayety.

But these tempests of spring pass rapidly.

Her smile, the sunshine of life's dawn, returned like that of Nature, sparkling through that dew of the heart we call tears.
Then, one day about six months before this story opens, Amelie's face had saddened, her cheeks had grown pale, and, like the birds who migrate at the approach of wintry weather, the childlike laughter that escaped her parted lips and white teeth had fled never to return.
Madame de Montrevel had questioned her, but Amelie asserted that she was still the same.

She endeavored to smile, but as a stone thrown into a lake rings upon the surface, so the smiles roused by this maternal solicitude faded, little by little, from Amelie's face.