those two little bones, like rocks at low tide. Poor Virginie! her
summer is gone, and the leaves are falling; poor little cat!"--and
Virginie stroked her own chestnut head, as if she had been pitying
another, and began humming a little Norman air, with a refrain that
sounded like the murmur of a brook over the stones.

The more Mary was touched by these little poetic ways, which ran just
on an even line between the gay and the pathetic, the more indignant
she grew with the man that had brought all this sorrow. She felt a
saintly vindictiveness, and a determination to place herself as an
adamantine shield between him and her friend. There is no courage and
no anger like that of a gentle woman, when once fully roused; if ever
you have occasion to meet it, you will certainly remember the hour.


CHAPTER XXXII.

PLAIN TALK.


Mary revolved the affairs of her friend in her mind, during the night.
The intensity of the mental crisis through which she had herself just
passed had developed her in many inward respects, so that she looked
upon life no longer as a timid girl, but as a strong, experienced
woman. She had thought, and suffered, and held converse with eternal
realities, until thousands of mere earthly hesitations and timidities,
that often restrain a young and untried nature, had entirely lost their
hold upon her. Besides, Mary had at heart the true Puritan seed of
heroism,--never absent from the souls of true New England women. Her
essentially Hebrew education, trained in daily converse with the words