ontinued Sylvie; "you deserve
to be sent from the table to go and eat by yourself in the kitchen."

"What's the matter with you two?" cried Rogron, "you are as cross as
bears this morning."

"Mademoiselle knows what I have against her," said Sylvie. "I leave her
to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her more
kindness than she deserves."

Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin's eyes,
which frightened her.

"Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if
I were that sugar-basin! And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can
hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her
from below. She is perversity itself,--perversity, I say; and you
needn't expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?"

"What has she done wrong?" asked Rogron.

"At her age, too! to begin so young!" screamed the angry old maid.

Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do, for
she could hardly bear the scene any longer. Though such language was not
new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her cousin's rage
seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what her fury would
be if she came to know about Brigaut. Perhaps her cousin would have him
sent away, and she should lose him! All the many thoughts, the deep and
rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she resolved to keep absolute
silence about a circumstance in which her conscience told her there was
nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter words she had been made to hear and
the wounding suspicion so shocked her that as she reached the kitchen
she was taken with a convulsion of the stomach and turned deadly sick.
She dared not complain; she was not sure that any one would help her.
When she returned to the dining-room she was white as a sheet, and,
saying she was not well, she started to go to bed, dragging herself up
step by step by the baluster and thinking that she was going to die.
"Poor Brigaut!" she thought.

"The girl is ill," said Rogron.

"She ill! That's only _shamming_," replied Sylvie, in a loud voice that
Pierrette might hear. "She was well enough this morning, I can tell
you."

This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping
and praying to God to take her out of this world.

VII. DOMESTIC TYRANNY

For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the "Constitutionnel" to
Gouraud; the colonel came obsequiously to fetch hi