Rose was laughing like a lunatic, and looked very flushed, but she was soaked to such a point that water streamed from her clothes, her hair, her hands.  You might have taken her for some fairy of the springs who had overturned her urn on herself.

“Well, the fete is complete,” she exclaimed breathlessly.  “All the same, we are the first home.”

She then darted upstairs to comb her hair and change her gown.  But to gain just a few minutes, eager as she was to cook the crawfish, she did not take the trouble to put on dry linen.  She wished the pot to be on the fire with the water, the white wine, the carrots and spices, before the family arrived.  And she came and went, attending to the fire and filling the whole kitchen with her gay activity, like a good housewife who was glad to display her accomplishments, while her betrothed, who had also come downstairs again after changing his clothes, watched her with a kind of religious admiration.

At last, when the whole family had arrived, the folks of the brake and the pedestrians also, there came a rather sharp explanation.  Mathieu and Marianne were angry, so greatly had they been alarmed by that rush through the storm.

“There was no sense in it, my girl,” Marianne repeated.  “Did you at least change your linen?”

“Why yes, why yes!” replied Rose.  “Where are the crawfish?”

Mathieu meantime was lecturing Frederic.  “You might have broken your necks,” said he; “and, besides, it is by no means good to get soaked with cold water when one is hot.  You ought to have stopped her.”

“Well, she insisted on going on, and whenever she insists on anything, you know, I haven’t the strength to prevent her.”

At last Rose, in her pretty way, put an end to the reproaches.  “Come, that’s enough scolding; I did wrong, no doubt.  But won’t anybody compliment me on my court-bouillon?  Have you ever known crawfish to smell as nice as that?”

The lunch was wonderfully gay.  As they were twenty, and wished to have a real rehearsal of the wedding feast, the table had been set in a large gallery adjoining the ordinary dining-room.  This gallery was still bare, but throughout the meal they talked incessantly of how they would embellish it with shrubs, garlands of foliage, and clumps of flowers.  During the dessert they even sent for a ladder with the view of indicating on the walls the main lines of the decorations.

For a moment or so Rose, previously so talkative, had lapsed into silence.  She had eaten heartily, but all the color had left her face, which had assumed a waxy pallor under her heavy hair, which was still damp.  And when she wished to ascend the ladder herself to indicate how some ornament should be placed, her legs suddenly failed her, she staggered, and then fainted away.

Everybody was in consternation, but she was promptly placed in a chair, where for a few minutes longer she remained unconscious.  Then, on coming to her senses, she remained for a moment silent, oppressed as by a feeling of pain, and apparently failing to understand what had taken place.  Mathieu and Marianne, terribly upset, pressed her with questions, anxious as they were to know if she felt better.  She had evidently caught cold, and this was the fine result of her foolish ride.