“You had better dare to give me the lie!” continued Sylvie; “you deserve to be sent from the table to go and eat by yourself in the kitchen.”

“What’s the matter with you two?” cried Rogron, “you are as cross as bears this morning.”

“Mademoiselle knows what I have against her,” said Sylvie.  “I leave her to make up her mind before speaking to you; for I mean to show her more kindness than she deserves.”

Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin’s eyes, which frightened her.

“Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if I were that sugar-basin!  And yet mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her from below.  She is perversity itself,—­perversity, I say; and you needn’t expect any good of her; do you hear me, Jerome?”

“What has she done wrong?” asked Rogron.

“At her age, too! to begin so young!” screamed the angry old maid.

Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do, for she could hardly bear the scene any longer.  Though such language was not new to her, she had never been able to get used to it.  Her cousin’s rage seemed to accuse her of some crime.  She imagined what her fury would be if she came to know about Brigaut.  Perhaps her cousin would have him sent away, and she should lose him!  All the many thoughts, the deep and rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she resolved to keep absolute silence about a circumstance in which her conscience told her there was nothing wrong.  But the cruel, bitter words she had been made to hear and the wounding suspicion so shocked her that as she reached the kitchen she was taken with a convulsion of the stomach and turned deadly sick.  She dared not complain; she was not sure that any one would help her.  When she returned to the dining-room she was white as a sheet, and, saying she was not well, she started to go to bed, dragging herself up step by step by the baluster and thinking that she was going to die.  “Poor Brigaut!” she thought.

“The girl is ill,” said Rogron.

“She ill!  That’s only shamming,” replied Sylvie, in a loud voice that Pierrette might hear.  “She was well enough this morning, I can tell you.”

This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping and praying to God to take her out of this world.

VII

DOMESTIC TYRANNY

For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the “Constitutionnel” to Gouraud; the colonel came obsequiously to fetch his paper, gossip a little, and take Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine.  Sure of seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed herself as coquettishly as she knew how.  The old maid thought she was attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a white bonnet with straggling gray feathers.  About the hour when the colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself in the salon with her brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his dressing-gown and slippers.