real reason for your
opposing my marriage--a marriage with a young girl you've always known,
who has been received here--"

"Ah, that's it--we've always known her!" the old lady snapped him up.

"What of that? I don't see--"

"Of course you don't. You're here so little: you don't hear things...."

"What things?"

"Things in the air... that blow about.... You were doing your military
service at the time...."

"At what time?"

She leaned forward and laid a warning hand on his arm. "Why did
Corvenaire leave her all that money--_why?_"

"But why not--why shouldn't he?" Jean stammered, indignant. Then she
unpacked her bag--a heap of vague insinuations, baseless conjectures,
village tattle, all, at the last analysis, based, as he succeeded
in proving, and making her own, on a word launched at random by a
discharged maid-servant who had retailed her grievance to the cure's
housekeeper. "Oh, she does what she likes with Monsieur le Marquis, the
young miss! _She_ knows how...." On that single phrase the neighbourhood
had raised a slander built of adamant.

Well, I'll give you an idea of what a determined fellow Rechamp is, when
I tell you he pulled it down--or thought he did. He kept his temper,
hunted up the servant's record, proved her a liar and dishonest, cast
grave doubts on the discretion of the cure's housekeeper, and poured
such a flood of ridicule over the whole flimsy fable, and those who
had believed in it, that in sheer shamefacedness at having based her
objection on such grounds, his grandmother gave way, and brought his
parents toppling down with her.

All this happened a few weeks before the war, and soon afterward Mlle.
Malo came down to Rechamp. Jean had insisted on her coming: he wanted
her presence there, as his betrothed, to be known to the neighbourhood.
As for her, she seemed delighted to come. I could see from Rechamp's
tone, when he reached this part of his story, that he rather thought I
should expect its heroine to have shown a becoming reluctance--to
have stood on her dignity. He was distinctly relieved when he found I
expected no such thing.

"She's simplicity itself--it's her great quality. Vain complications
don't exist for her, because she doesn't see them... that's what my
people can't be made to understand...."

I gathered from the last phrase that the visit had not been a complete
success, and this explained his having let out, when he first told me
of his fears for his family, t