ive surrounded by secrets.
Raynal's gloomy looks when he left us, after staying but one hour;
Josephine ill from that day, and bursting into tears at every word;
yourself pale and changed, hiding an unaccountable sadness under forced
smiles--Now, don't interrupt me. Edouard, who was almost like a son,
gone off, without a word, and never comes near us now."

"Really you are ingenious in tormenting yourself. Josephine is ill!
Well, is it so very strange? Have you never been ill? Rose is pale! you
ARE pale, my dear; but she has nursed her sister for a month; is it a
wonder she has lost color? Edouard is gone a journey, to inherit his
uncle's property: a million francs. But don't you go and fall ill, like
Josephine; turn pale, like Rose; and make journeys in the region of
fancy, after Edouard Riviere, who is tramping along on the vulgar high
road."

This tirade came from Aubertin, and very clever he thought himself.
But he had to do with a shrewd old lady, whose suspicions had long
smouldered; and now burst out. She said quietly, "Oh, then Edouard is
not in this part of the world. That alters the case: where IS he?"

"In Normandy, probably," said Rose, blushing.

The baroness looked inquiringly towards Aubertin. He put on an innocent
face and said nothing.

"Very good," said the baroness. "It's plain I am to learn nothing from
you two. But I know somebody who will be more communicative. Yes:
this uncomfortable smiling, and unreasonable crying, and interminable
whispering; these appearances of the absent, and disappearances of the
present; I shall know this very day what they all mean."

"Really, I do not understand you."

"Oh, never mind; I am an old woman, and I am in my dotage. For all that,
perhaps you will allow me two words alone with my daughter."

"I retire, madame," and he disappeared with a bow to her, and an anxious
look at Rose. She did not need this; she clenched her teeth, and braced
herself up to stand a severe interrogatory.

Mother and daughter looked at one another, as if to measure forces, and
then, instead of questioning her as she had intended, the baroness sank
back in her chair and wept aloud. Rose was all unprepared for this. She
almost screamed in a voice of agony, "O mamma! mamma! O God! kill me
where I stand for making my mother weep!"

"My girl," said the baroness in a broken voice, and with the most
touching dignity, "may you never know what a mother feels who finds
herself shut out f