osseuse was loved and pitied
and despised by turns. Everything in her nature was a cause of suffering
to her--her indolence, her kindness of heart, her coquetry; for she is
coquettish, dainty, and inquisitive, in short, she is a woman; she is as
simple as a child, and, like a child, she is carried away by her
tastes and her impressions. If you tell her about some noble deed, she
trembles, her color rises, her heart throbs fast, and she sheds tears of
joy; if you begin a story about robbers, she turns pale with terror.
You could not find a more sincere, open-hearted, and scrupulously loyal
nature anywhere; if you were to give a hundred gold pieces into her
keeping, she would bury them in some out-of-the-way nook and beg her
bread as before."

There was a change in Benassis' tone as he uttered these last words.

"I once determined to put her to the proof," he said, "and I repented
of it. It is like espionage to bring a test to bear upon another, is it
not? It means that we suspect them at any rate."

Here the doctor paused, as though some inward reflection engrossed him;
he was quite unconscious of the embarrassment that his last remark had
caused to his companion, who busied himself with disentangling the reins
in order to hide his confusion. Benassis soon resumed his talk.

"I should like to find a husband for my Fosseuse. I should be glad to
make over one of my farms to some good fellow who would make her
happy. And she would be happy. The poor girl would love her children
to distraction; for motherhood, which develops the whole of a woman's
nature, would give full scope to her overflowing sentiments. She has
never cared for any one, however. Yet her impressionable nature is
a danger to her. She knows this herself, and when she saw that I
recognized it, she admitted the excitability of her temperament to me.
She belongs to the small minority of women whom the slightest contact
with others causes to vibrate perilously; so that she must be made to
value herself on her discretion and her womanly pride. She is as wild
and shy as a swallow! Ah! what a wealth of kindness there is in her!
Nature meant her to be a rich woman; she would be so beneficent: for
a well-loved woman; she would be so faithful and true. She is only
twenty-two years old, and is sinking already beneath the weight of her
soul; a victim to highly-strung nerves, to an organization either too
delicate or too full of power. A passionate love for a faithles