hing.

He was seized with dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took the
little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen by his
father and brother.

When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim, and
haggard.

"Good evening," said Mme. Rosemilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
of tea."

But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
Pierre made off, the door having been left open.

When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
bear!"

Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."

"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
like a savage."

Mme. Rosemilly tried to smooth matters by saying: "Not at all, not at
all. He has gone away in the English fashion; people always disappear in
that way in fashionable circles if they want to leave early."

"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man does
not treat his family _a l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done nothing
else for some time past."

CHAPTER VI

For a week or two nothing occurred. The father went fishing; Jean, with
his mother's help, was furnishing and settling himself; Pierre, very
gloomy, never was seen excepting at meal-times.

His father having asked him one evening: "Why the deuce do you always
com in with a face as cheerful as a funeral? This is not the first time
I have remarked it."

The doctor replied: "The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden
of life."

The old man did not have a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved
look he went on: "It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good luck
to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as though some
accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for some one."

"I am in mourning for some one," said Pierre.

"You are? For whom?"

"For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond."

Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
some love passages, and he said:

"A woman, I suppose."

"Yes, a woman."

"Dead?"

"No. Worse. Ruined!"

"Ah!"

Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife's
presence too, and by his son's strange tone about it, t