"A devil and an angel!" they said to each other, laughing, little thinking it prophetic.
After weeping for a month in the solitude of her chamber, where she admitted no one, the mother came forth at last with injured eyes.

Before losing her sight altogether she persisted, against the wishes of her friends, in visiting her daughter's grave, on which she riveted her gaze in contemplation.

That image remained vivid in the darkness which now fell upon her, just as the red spectrum of an object shines in our eyes when we close them in full daylight.

This terrible and double misfortune made Dumay, not less devoted, but more anxious about Modeste, now the only daughter of the father who was unaware of his loss.

Madame Dumay, idolizing Modeste, like other women deprived of their children, cast her motherliness about the girl,--yet without disregarding the commands of her husband, who distrusted female intimacies.