er morning gown of white
muslin with red spots. Then, having still a quarter of an hour on her
hands, she satisfied an old desire and sat down to sew a piece of narrow
lace, an imitation of Chantilly, on her working blouse, that black
blouse which she had begun to find too boyish, not feminine enough.
But on the stroke of eight she laid down her work, and went downstairs
quickly.

"You are going to breakfast entirely alone," said Martine tranquilly to
her, when she entered the dining-room.

"How is that?"

"Yes, the doctor called me, and I passed him in his egg through the
half-open door. There he is again, at his mortar and his filter. We
won't see him now before noon."

Clotilde turned pale with disappointment. She drank her milk standing,
took her roll in her hand, and followed the servant into the
kitchen. There were on the ground floor, besides this kitchen and the
dining-room, only an uninhabited room in which the potatoes were stored,
and which had formerly been used as an office by the doctor, when he
received his patients in his house--the desk and the armchair had years
ago been taken up to his chamber--and another small room, which opened
into the kitchen; the old servant's room, scrupulously clean, and
furnished with a walnut chest of drawers and a bed like a nun's with
white hangings.

"Do you think he has begun to make his liquor again?" asked Clotilde.

"Well, it can be only that. You know that he thinks of neither eating
nor drinking when that takes possession of him!"

Then all the young girl's vexation was exhaled in a low plaint:

"Ah, my God! my God!"

And while Martine went to make up her room, she took an umbrella from
the hall stand and went disconsolately to eat her roll in the garden,
not knowing now how she should occupy her time until midday.

It was now almost seventeen years since Dr. Pascal, having resolved
to leave his little house in the new town, had bought La Souleiade for
twenty thousand francs, in order to live there in seclusion, and also
to give more space and more happiness to the little girl sent him by his
brother Saccard from Paris. This Souleiade, situated outside the town
gates on a plateau dominating the plain, was part of a large estate
whose once vast grounds were reduced to less than two hectares in
consequence of successive sales, without counting that the construction
of the railroad had taken away the last arable fields. The house itself
had been half destr