id went to sleep and the baroness and the priest
began to chat in low tones. The abbe talked of what had just occurred
and proceeded to explain his ideas on the subject, while the baroness
assented to everything he said with a nod.

"Very well, then, it's understood," he said, in conclusion. "You give
the girl the farm at Barville and I will undertake to find her a good,
honest husband. Oh, you may be sure that with twenty thousand francs we
shall not want candidates for her hand. We shall have an _embarras de
choix_."

The baroness was smiling happily now, though two tears still lingered on
her cheeks.

"Barville is worth twenty thousand francs, at the very least," she said;
"and you understand that it is to be settled on the child though the
parents will have it as long as they live."

Then the cure shook hands with the baroness, and rose to go.

"Don't get up, Madame la baronne, don't get up," he exclaimed. "I know
the value of a step too well myself."

As he went out he met Aunt Lison coming to see her patient. She did not
notice that anything extraordinary had happened. No one had told her
anything, and, as usual, she had not the slightest idea of what was
going on.

* * * * *

VIII

Rosalie had left the house and the time of Jeanne's confinement was
drawing near. The sorrow she had gone through had taken away all
pleasure from the thought of becoming a mother, and she waited for the
child's birth without any impatience or curiosity, her mind entirely
filled with her presentiment of coming evils.

Spring was close at hand. The bare trees still trembled in the cold
wind, but, in the damp ditches, the yellow primroses were already
blossoming among the decaying autumn leaves. The rain-soaked fields, the
farm-yards and the commons exhaled a damp odor, as of fermenting
liquor, and little green leaves peeped out of the brown earth and
glistened in the sun.

A big, strongly-built woman had been engaged in Rosalie's place, and she
now supported the baroness in her dreary walks along the avenue, where
the track made by her foot was always damp and muddy.

Jeanne, low-spirited and in constant pain, leant on her father's arm
when she went out, while on her other side walked Aunt Lison, holding
her niece's hand, and thinking nervously, of this mysterious suffering
that she would never know. They would all three walk for hours without
speaking a word, and, while they were out, Juli