show that they were only yawning.
These two human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their
rusty wheels, were creaking and grating at each other. The brother
talked of marrying, but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the
thought of a woman frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the
necessity of having a third person in the home, suddenly remembered
the little cousin, about whom no one in Provins had yet inquired, the
friends of Madame Lorrain probably supposing that mother and child
were both dead.

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid
even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have
suddenly found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette
naturally to her brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility
of having a little girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame
Lorrain's letter half affectionately, half commercially, as one may
say, explaining the delay by their change of abode and the settlement
of their affairs. She seemed desirous of receiving her little cousin,
and hinted that Pierrette would perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs
a year if her brother Jerome did not marry.

Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something
of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes
without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or
a retired merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to
understand the impatience with which the brother and sister awaited
the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had
gone, the pair were already asking themselves when she would get
there.

Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin a
means of recovering her position in the social world of Provins. She
accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she
was conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette's approaching
arrival,--deploring the girl's unfortunate position, and posing
herself as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position
as daughter and future heiress.

"You have been rather long in discovering her," said Madame Tiphaine,
with a touch of sarcasm.

A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards
were being dealt, recalled to the minds of those who heard her the
shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary
explained the iniquity.

"Where is the little g