the cure, you want to put the affair off until the week
when two Sundays come together! I am a little curious to know what that
confounded old abbe has been babbling about me, to turn you inside out
like a glove in such a short time."

Claudet's conscience reminded him of several rare frolics, chance
love-affairs, meetings in the woods, and so on, and he feared the priest
might have told Reine some unfavorable stories about him. "Ah!" he
continued, clenching his fists, "if this old poacher in a cassock has
done me an ill turn with you, he will not have much of a chance for
paradise!"

"Undeceive yourself," said Reine, quickly, "Monsieur le Cure is your
friend, like myself; he esteems you highly, and never has said anything
but good of you."

"Oh, indeed!" sneered the young man, "as you are both so fond of me, how
does it happen that you have given me my dismissal the very day after
your interview with the cure?"

Reine, knowing Claudet's violent disposition, and wishing to avoid
trouble for the cure, thought it advisable to have recourse to evasion.

"Monsieur le Cure," said she, "has had no part in my decision. He has
not spoken against you, and deserves no reproaches from you."

"In that case, why do you send me away?"

"I repeat again, the comfort and peace of my father are paramount with
me, and I do not intend to marry so long as he may have need of me."

"Well," said Claudet, persistently, "I love you, and I will wait."

"It can not be."

"Why?"

"Because," replied she, sharply, "because it would be kind neither to
you, nor to my father, nor to me. Because marriages that drag along in
that way are never good for anything!"

"Those are bad reasons!" he muttered, gloomily.

"Good or bad," replied the young girl, "they appear valid to me, and I
hold to them."

"Reine," said he, drawing near to her and looking straight into her
eyes, "can you swear, by the head of your father, that you have given me
the true reason for your rejecting me?"

She became embarrassed, and remained silent.

"See!" he exclaimed, "you dare not take the oath!"

"My word should suffice," she faltered.

"No; it does not suffice. But your silence says a great deal, I tell
you! You are too frank, Reine, and you don't know how to lie. I read it
in your eyes, I do. The true reason is that you do not love me."

She shrugged her shoulders and turned away her head.

"No, you do not love me. If you had any love for me, instead o