rid of you: this done (through your want of spirit), he scorns the
rich prize; so now I scorn HIM. Will you come for a walk?"

"Oh, yes!"

"We will go and look for my deserter. I say, tell me now; cannot I write
to the commander-in-chief about this? a soldier has no right to be a
deserter, has he? tell me, you are a public man, and know everything
except my heart."

"Is it not too bad to tease me to-day?"

"Yes! but please! I have had few amusements of late. I find it so dull
without you to tease."

Formal permission to tease being conceded, she went that instant on the
opposite tack, and began to tell him how she had missed him, and how
sorry she had been anything should have occurred to vex their kind good
friend. In short, Edouard spent a delightful day, for Rose took him one
way to meet Josephine, who, she knew, was coming another. At night the
last embers of jealousy got quenched, for Josephine was a wife now, and
had already begun to tell Camille all her little innocent secrets; and
she told him all about Edouard and Rose, and gave him his orders; so he
treated Rose with great respect before Edouard; but paid her no marked
attention; also he was affable to Riviere, who, having ceased to
suspect, began to like him.

In the course of the evening, the colonel also informed the baroness
that he expected every day an order to join the army of the Rhine.

Edouard pricked his ears.

The baroness said no more than politeness dictated. She did not press
him to stay, but treated his departure as a matter of course. Riviere
rode home late in the evening in high spirits.

The next day Rose varied her late deportment; she sang snatches of
melody, going about the house; it was for all the world like a bird
chirping. In the middle of one chirp Jacintha interfered. "Hush,
mademoiselle, your mamma! she is at the bottom of the corridor."

"What was I thinking of?" said Rose.

"Oh! I dare say you know, mademoiselle," replied the privileged
domestic.

A letter of good news came from Aubertin. That summons to his nephew's
funeral was an era in his harmless life.

The said nephew was a rich man and an oddity; one of those who love to
surprise folk. Moreover, he had no children, and detected his nephews
and nieces being unnaturally civil to him. "Waiting to cut me up," was
his generous reading of them. So with this he made a will, and there
defied, as far as in him lay, the laws of nature; for he set his wealth
a-flowi