she been taken to Paris for
a fortnight, but that was another town, and she longed for the country.
Now she was going to spend the summer on their estate, Les Peuples, in
an old family chateau built on the cliff near Yport; and she was looking
forward to the boundless happiness of a free life beside the waves. And
then it was understood that the manor was to be given to her, and that
she was to live there always when she was married; and the rain which
had been falling incessantly since the night before was the first real
grief of her life.

In three minutes she came running out of her mother's room, crying:

"Papa! papa! Mamma is quite willing. Tell them to harness the horses."

The rain had not given over in the least, in fact, it was coming down
still faster when the landau came round to the door. Jeanne was ready to
jump in when the baroness came down the stairs, supported on one side by
her husband, and on the other by a tall maid, whose frame was as strong
and as well-knit as a boy's. She was a Normandy girl from Caux, and
looked at least twenty years old, though she really was scarcely
eighteen. In the baron's family she was treated somewhat like a second
daughter, for she was Jeanne's foster-sister. She was named Rosalie, and
her principal duty consisted in aiding her mistress to walk, for, within
the last few years, the baroness had attained an enormous size, owing
to an hypertrophy of the heart, of which she was always complaining.

Breathing very hard, the baroness reached the steps of the old hotel;
there she stopped to look at the court-yard where the water was
streaming down, and murmured:

"Really, it is not prudent."

Her husband answered with a smile:

"It was you who wished it, Madame Adelaide."

She bore the pompous name of Adelaide, and he always prefaced it by
"Madame" with a certain little look of mock-respect.

She began to move forward again, and with difficulty got into the
carriage, all the springs of which bent under her weight. The baron sat
by her side, and Jeanne and Rosalie took their places with their backs
to the horses. Ludivine, the cook, brought a bundle of rugs, which were
thrown over their knees, and two baskets, which were pushed under their
legs; then she climbed up beside old Simon and enveloped herself in a
great rug, which covered her entirely. The concierge and his wife came
to shut the gate and wish them good-bye, and after some parting
instructions about the bagga