Jezebel's Daughter

her, she forced her handkerchief into her mouth, and fastened her teeth into it. The paroxysm passed, she sat up on the sofa, and wiped the perspiration from her face, and smiled to herself. 'It was well I stopped here,' she thought; 'I might have met someone on the stairs.'

As she rose to leave the drawing-room, Fritz's voice reached her from the far end of the corridor.

'You are out of spirits, Minna. Come in, and let us try what a little music will do for you.'

The door leading into the recess was opened. Minna's voice became audible next, on the inner side of the curtains.

'I am afraid I can't sing to-day, Fritz. I am very unhappy about mamma. She looks so anxious and so ill; and when I ask what is troubling her, she puts me off with an excuse.'

The melody of those fresh young tones, the faithful love and sympathy which the few simple words expressed, seemed to wring with an unendurable pain the whole being of the mother who heard them. She lifted her hands above her head, and clenched them in the agony which could only venture to seek that silent means of relief. With swift steps, as if the sound of her daughter's voice was unendurable to her, she made for the door. But her movements, on ordinary occasions the perfection of easy grace, felt the disturbing influence of the agitation that possessed her. In avoiding a table on one side, as she passed it, she struck against a chair on the other.

Fritz instantly opened the curtains, and looked through. 'Why, here is mamma!' he exclaimed, in his hearty boyish way.

Minna instantly closed the piano, and hastened to her mother. When Madame Fontaine looked at her, she paused, with an expression of alarm. 'Oh, how dreadfully pale and ill you look!' She advanced again, and tried to throw her arms round her mother, and kiss her. Gently, very gently, Madame Fontaine signed to her to draw back.

'Mamma! what have I done to offend you?'

'Nothing, my dear.'

'Then why won't you let me come to you?'

'No time now, Minna. I have something to do. Wait till I have done it.'

'Not even one little kiss, mamma?'

Madame Fontaine hurried out of the room without answering and ran up the stairs without looking back. Minna's eyes filled with tears. Fritz stood at the open door, bewildered.

'I wouldn't have believed it, if anybody had told me,' he said; 'your mother seems to be afraid to let you touch her.'

Fritz had made many mistaken guesses in his time—but, for once, he had guessed right. She was afraid.

CHAPTER XII

As the presiding genius of the household, Madame Fontaine was always first in the room when the table was laid for the early German dinner. A knife with a speck on the blade, a plate with a suspicion of dirt on it, never once succeeded in escaping her observation. If Joseph folded a napkin carelessly, Joseph not only heard of it, but suffered the indignity of seeing his work performed for him to perfection by the housekeeper's dexterous hands.

On the second day of the New Year, she was at her post as usual, and Joseph stood convicted of being wasteful in the matter of wine.

He had put one bottle of Ohligsberger on the table, at the place occupied by Madame Fontaine. The wine had already been used at the dinner and the supper of the previous day. At least two-thirds of it had been drunk. Joseph set down a second bottle on the opposite side of the table, and produced his corkscrew. Madame Fontaine took it out of his hand.

'Why do you open that bottle, before you are sure it will be wanted?' She asked sharply. 'You know that Mr. Keller and his son prefer beer.'

'There is so little left in the other bottle,' Joseph pleaded; 'not a full tumbler altogether.'

'It may be enough, little as it is, for Mrs. Wagner and for me.' With that reply she pointed to the door. Joseph retired, leaving her alone at the table, until the dinner was ready to be brought into the room.

In five minutes more, the family assembled at their meal.

Joseph performed his customary duties sulkily, resenting the housekeeper's reproof. When the time came for filling the glasses, he had the satisfaction of hearing Madame Fontaine herself give him orders to draw the cork of a new bottle, after all.

Mrs. Wagner turned to Jack, standing behind her chair as usual, and asked for some wine. Madame Fontaine instantly took up the nearly empty bottle by her side, and, half-filling a glass, handed it with grave politeness across the table. 'If you have no objection,' she said, 'we will finish one bottle, before we open another.'

Mrs. Wagner drank her small portion of wine at a draught. 'It doesn't seem to keep well, after it has once been opened,' she remarked, as she set down her glass. 'The wine has quite lost the good flavor it had yesterday.'

'It ought to keep well,' said Mr. Keller, speaking from his place at the top of the table. 'It's old wine, and good wine. Let me taste what is left.'

Joseph advanced to carry the remains of the wine to his master. But Madame Fontaine was beforehand with him. 'Open the other bottle directly,' she said—and rose so hurriedly to take the wine herself to Mr. Keller, that she caught her foot in her dress. In saving herself from falling, she lost her hold of the bottle. It broke in two pieces, and the little wine left in it ran out on the floor.

'Pray forgive me,' she said, smiling faintly. 'It is the first thing I have broken since I have been in the house.'

The wine from the new bottle was offered to Mrs. Wagner. She declined to take any: and she left her dinner unfinished on her plate.

'My appetite is very easily spoilt,' she said. 'I dare say there might have been something I didn't notice in the