"Good God! If SHE had seen this!" exclaimed Grandmamma, turning from me
and wiping away her tears. "If she had seen this! It may be all for
the best, yet she could never have survived such grief--never!" and
Grandmamma wept more and more. I too wept, but it never occurred to me
to ask for pardon.

"Tranquillisez-vous au nom du ciel, Madame la Comtesse," said St.
Jerome, but Grandmamma heard him not. She covered her face with her
hands, and her sobs soon passed to hiccups and hysteria. Mimi and Gasha
came running in with frightened faces, salts and spirits were applied,
and the whole house was soon in a ferment.

"You may feel pleased at your work," said St. Jerome to me as he led me
from the room.

"Good God! What have I done?" I thought to myself. "What a terribly bad
boy I am!"

As soon as St. Jerome, bidding me go into his room, had returned to
Grandmamma, I, all unconscious of what I was doing, ran down the grand
staircase leading to the front door. Whether I intended to drown myself,
or whether merely to run away from home, I do not remember. I only know
that I went blindly on, my face covered with my hands that I might see
nothing.

"Where are you going to?" asked a well-known voice. "I want you, my
boy."

I would have passed on, but Papa caught hold of me, and said sternly: