of about forty to fifty years of age, robust and masculine,
were negligently and shabbily dressed, like chambermaids of the lower
sort; over their clothes they wore large aprons of blue cotton, cut
sloping from their necks, and reaching down to their feet. One of them,
who held a lamp in her hand, had a broad, red, shining face, a large
pimpled nose, small green eyes, and tow hair, which straggled rough and
shaggy from beneath her dirty white cap. The other, sallow, withered,
and bony, wore a mourning-cap over a parchment visage, pitted with
the small-pox, and rendered still more repulsive by the thick black
eyebrows, and some long gray hairs that overshadowed the upper lip. This
woman carried, half unfolded in her hand, a garment of strange form,
made of thick gray stuff.

They both entered silently by the little door, at the moment when
Adrienne, in the excess of her terror, was grasping the bars of the
window, and crying out: "Help! help!"

Pointing out the young lady to each other, one of them went to place the
lamp on the chimney-piece, whilst the other (she who wore the mourning
cap) approached the window, and laid her great bony hand upon Mdlle. de
Cardoville's shoulder.

Turning round, Adrienne uttered a new cry of terror at the sight of this
grim figure. Then, the first moment of stupor over, she began to feel
less afraid; hideous as was this woman, it was at least some one to
speak to; she exclaimed, therefore, in an agitated voice: "Where is M.
Baleinier?"

The two women looked at each other, exchanged a leer of mutual
intelligence, but did not answer.

"I ask you, madame," resumed Adrienne, "where is M. Baleinier, who
brought me hither? I wish to see him instantly."

"He is gone," said the big woman.

"Gone!" cried Adrienne; "gone without me!--Gracious heaven! what can
be the meaning of all this?" Then, after a moment's reflection, she
resumed, "Please to fetch me a coach."

The two women looked at each other, and shrugged their shoulders. "I
entreat you, madame," continued Adrienne, with forced calmness in her
voice, "to fetch me a coach since M. Baleinier is gone without me. I
wish to leave this place."

"Come, come, madame," said the tall woman, who was called "Tomboy,"
without appearing to listen to what Adrienne asked, "it is time for you
to go to bed."

"To go to bed!" cried Mdlle. Cardoville, in alarm. "This is really
enough to drive one mad." Then, addressing the two women, she added: