Monsieur d’Hauteserre proved an upright and most careful guardian.  Under his administration Cinq-Cygne became a sort of farm.  The good man, who was far more of a close manager than a knight of the old nobility, had turned the park and gardens to profit, and used their two hundred acres of grass and woodland as pasturage for horses and fuel for the family.  Thanks to his severe economy the countess, on coming of age, had recovered by his investments in the State funds a competent fortune.  In 1798 she possessed about twenty thousand francs a year from those sources, on which, in fact, some dividends were still due, and twelve thousand francs a year from the rentals at Cinq-Cygne, which had lately been renewed at a notable increase.  Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre had provided for their old age by the purchase of an annuity of three thousand francs in the Tontines Lafarge.  That fragment of their former means did not enable them to live elsewhere than at Cinq-Cygne, and Laurence’s first act on coming to her majority was to give them the use for life of the wing of the chateau which they occupied.

The Hauteserres, as niggardly for their ward as they were for themselves, laid up every year nearly the whole of their annuity for the benefit of their sons, and kept the young heiress on miserable fare.  The whole cost of the Cinq-Cygne household never exceeded five thousand francs a year.  But Laurence, who condescended to no details, was satisfied.  Her guardian and his wife, unconsciously ruled by the imperceptible influence of her strong character, which was felt even in little things, had ended by admiring her whom they had known and treated as a child,—­a sufficiently rare feeling.  But in her manner, her deep voice, her commanding eye, Laurence held that inexplicable power which rules all men,—­even when its strength is mere appearance.  To vulgar minds real depth is incomprehensible; it is perhaps for that reason that the populace is so prone to admire what it cannot understand.  Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, impressed by the habitual silence and erratic habits of the young girl, were constantly expecting some extraordinary thing of her.

Laurence, who did good intelligently and never allowed herself to be deceived, was held in the utmost respect by the peasantry although she was an aristocrat.  Her sex, name, and great misfortunes, also the originality of her present life, contributed to give her authority over the inhabitants of the valley of Cinq-Cygne.  She was sometimes absent for two days, attended by Gothard, but neither Monsieur nor Madame d’Hauteserre questioned her, on her return, as to the reasons of her absence.  Please observe, however, that there was nothing odd or eccentric about Laurence.  What she was and what she did was masked, as it were, by a feminine and even fragile appearance.  Her heart was full of extreme sensibility, though her head contained a stoical firmness and the virile gift of resolution.  Her clear-seeing eyes knew not