at Edmee was not asleep, and that she
was talking to her attendant in a low voice. I fancied I noticed the
latter glancing at me from time to time out of the corner of her eye in
a somewhat stealthy manner. To escape the ordeal of such an examination,
and also from an impulse of cunning, which was by no means foreign to my
nature, I let my head fall on the book, and the book on the pier-table,
and in this posture I remained as if buried in sleep or thought. Then,
little by little, their voices grew louder, until I could hear what they
were saying about me.

"It's all the same; you have certainly have chosen a funny sort of page,
mademoiselle."

"A page, Leblanc! Why do you talk such nonsense? As if one had pages
nowadays! You are always imagining we are still in my grandmother's
time. I tell you he is my father's adopted son."

"M. le Chevalier is undoubtedly quite right to adopt a son; but where on
earth did he fish up such a creature as that?"

I gave a side glance at them and saw that Edmee was laughing behind her
fan. She was enjoying the chatter of this old maid, who was supposed to
be a wag and allowed perfect freedom of speech. I was very much hurt to
see my cousin was making fun of me.

"He looks like a bear, a badger, a wolf, a kite, anything rather than
a man," continued Leblanc. "What hands! what legs! And now he has been
cleaned up a little, he is nothing to what he was! You ought to have
seen him the day he arrived with his smock and his leather gaiters; it
was enough to take away one's breath."

"Do you think so?" answered Edmee. "For my part, I preferred him in his
poacher's garb. It suited his face and figure better."

"He looked like a bandit. You could not have looked at him properly,
mademoiselle."

"Oh! yes, I did."

The tone in which she pronounced these words, "Yes, I did," made me
shudder; and somehow I again felt upon my lips the impress of the kiss
she had given me at Roche-Mauprat.

"It would not be so bad if his hair were dressed properly," continued
the duenna; "but, so far, no one had been able to persuade him to have
it powdered. Saint-Jean told me that just as he was about to put the
powder puff to his head he got up in a rage and said, 'Anything you like
except that confounded flour. I want to be able to move my head about
without coughing and sneezing.' Heavens, what a savage!"

"Yet, in reality, he is quite right. If fashion did not sanction
the absurdity, everybody would