duet. Marcélite,"—the voice lost its excited tone and became pleading, humble, and timid,—"Marcélite, do you think my uncle will like me?"
"Mon Dieu! yes, yes, yes."
"Mais ne t'impatiente pas, ma bonne, I can't help thinking about it. He has never seen me—since I was a baby, I mean—and I don't recollect him at all, at all. Oh, Marcélite! I have tried so often, so often to recall him, and my maman"—she spoke it as shyly as an infant does the name of God in its first prayer. "If I could only go just one little point farther back, just that little bit"—she measured off a demi-centimetre on her finger—"but impossible. Maybe it will all come back to me when I see him, and the house, and the furniture. Perhaps if I had been allowed to see it only once or twice, I might be able to remember something. It is hard, Marcélite, it is very hard not even to be able to recollect a mother. To-morrow evening!"—she gave a long, long sigh,—"only to-morrow evening more!"
The depravity of the washerwoman must have got beyond even Marcélite's powers of
