ch a task--but Madame Famette has a severe attack of
rheumatism, and Jeanne cannot be trusted to buy the weekly provision of
groceries. Marie shrinks as she goes along at the thought of meeting
Leon Roussel. There is another thought, which she will not face--that it
is possible Leon and Elise Lesage will be together in the market-place.
"I need not go into the Grande Place at all," the poor child says. "I
can get all I want in the Rue des Bons Enfants;" and she goes there when
she reaches Aubette.

But Marie has miscalculated her strength. She grows suddenly so white
that Monsieur le Blanc, the epicier of the Rue des Bons Enfants, takes
her into his daughter's room and makes her lie down on the little sofa.
Marie lies there with widely-opened eyes, wondering how she shall get
back to St. Gertrude.

"You are to lie still till Therese comes back from market," the old man
says, "and then she will arrange about your going home."

Marie lies gazing dreamily at the blue-papered ceiling. "I used to think
Therese le Blanc a cross old maid," she ponders: "shall I be a cross old
maid too?" And then the pale, stricken girl holds up her thin hand and
sighs: "I shall not be old: I shall die soon. Poor mother! she will
forgive Nicolas when I am gone away."

There is a bustle in the shop, but Marie does not heed it. She smiles
when Therese comes in, but she is too weak to talk--too weak to make any
objection when she hears that a farmer who lives some miles beyond St.
Gertrude has undertaken to convey her in his huge green-hooded wagon as
far as the cross-road.

Therese stands over her while she eats a piece of bread and drinks a
glass of wine, and then the farmer, a stout old Norman in a gray blouse,
helps her into the back of the wagon, and makes a resting-place for her
on some of the hay still left unsold, under the lofty arched roof.

V.

"Get up my friend, get up: you will reach Yvetot sooner if I give you a
lift than if you wait. The diligence does not leave Aubette till six
o'clock, remember, and my old horses get over the ground surely if not
quickly."

Marie rouses from a sort of doze, but she cannot see the farmer or the
wayfarer to whom he speaks: a pile of new fruit-baskets fills up the
middle of the huge vehicle, and makes a wall between Marie and the
driving-seat.

"Well, mon gars, it is a long time since I saw you, and the town-gossip
of Aubette tells me more of your affairs than you ever condescend to
inf