“After all it was somebody belonging to me.  But it seemed the wildest idea.  Yet she came at once.  Of course I took care to send her some money.  She likes money.  As to my uncle there is nothing that he wouldn’t have given up for the service of the King.  Rose went to meet her at the railway station.  She told me afterwards that there had been no need for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese.  There was nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her.  I should think not!  She had made for herself a dress of some brown stuff like a nun’s habit and had a crooked stick and carried all her belongings tied up in a handkerchief.  She looked like a pilgrim to a saint’s shrine.  Rose took her to the house.  She asked when she saw it:  ’And does this big place really belong to our Rita?’ My maid of course said that it was mine.  ’And how long did our Rita live here?’—­’Madame has never seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know.  I believe Mr. Allegre lived here for some time when he was a young man.’—­’The sinner that’s dead?’—­’Just so,’ says Rose.  You know nothing ever startles Rose.  ‘Well, his sins are gone with him,’ said my sister, and began to make herself at home.

“Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself.  Some little time afterwards I went to see that sister of mine.  The first thing she said to me, ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, Rita,’ and I said, ’What a funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for this house.’—­’Yes,’ she said, ’and unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our country.  I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita.  Your life is no secret for me.’

“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me.  ’I don’t know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I said to her, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’ And then she told me that it was through a cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know.  He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a girl.  I got suddenly very furious.  I raged up and down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door.  I heard her say to herself, ’It’s the evil spirit in her that makes her like this.’  She was absolutely convinced of that.  She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself.  I was quite astounded.  And then I really couldn’t help myself.  I burst into a laugh.  I laughed and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran away.  I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and