which says within us, 'That is wrong,' began to make me listen to it when I stood beside my sister. I had never, during the two years that I lived with her, had a single thought she did not know; and in my whole life, which was that of a good child, my only serious fault had been in gathering the best flowers in the garden, though forbidden to do so. I planted the stalks in my little barrow, which I had first of all filled with earth, intending to have a little garden all to myself. Surprised by a servant, I had taken the barrow in my arms, run up the staircase four steps at a time, and had flung the whole, earth and flowers, into a closet where they kept coal, at the end of a corridor, the door of which I could never, after that, pass without trembling, though no one spoke to me of my naughtiness. Once or twice my sister Blanche had looked at me rather strangely; so that one day I burst into tears and avowed my misdeed. She curled my hair round her fingers, as she was wont to do when she kept me by her for some time, and said with a smile, 'Did you really think you could hide anything from me?' And now, would she see in my eyes the sin I was wishing to hide,—greater far than my first little fault; would she see it, or would my brother-in-law the doctor, that serious man whose silent ways had always rather frightened me? But no; whether it were that Blanche was now too feeble, and my brother-
