“It is a fine day, colonel,” said Rogron, when Gouraud with his heavy step entered the room.  “But I’m not dressed; my sister wanted to go out, and I was going to keep the house.  Wait for me; I’ll be ready soon.”

So saying, Rogron left Sylvie alone with the colonel.

“Where were you going? you are dressed divinely,” said Gouraud, who noticed a certain solemnity on the pock-marked face of the old maid.

“I wanted very much to go out, but my little cousin is ill, and I cannot leave her.”

“What is the matter with her?”

“I don’t know; she had to go to bed.”

Gouraud’s caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by the results of his alliance with Vinet.  It certainly appeared that the lawyer had got the lion’s share in their enterprise.  Vinet controlled the paper, he reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues; whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little.  Vinet and Cournant had done the Rogrons great services; whereas Gouraud, a colonel on half-pay, could do nothing.  Who was to be deputy?  Vinet.  Who was the chief authority in the party?  Vinet.  Whom did the liberals all consult?  Vinet.  Moreover, the colonel knew fully as well as Vinet himself the extent and depth of the passion suddenly aroused in Rogron by the beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf.  This passion had now become intense, like all the last passions of men.  Bathilde’s voice made him tremble.  Absorbed in his desires Rogron hid them; he dared not hope for such a marriage.  To sound him, the colonel mentioned that he was thinking himself of asking for Bathilde’s hand.  Rogron turned pale at the thought of such a formidable rival, and had since then shown coldness and even hatred to Gouraud.

Thus Vinet reigned supreme in the Rogron household while he, the colonel, had no hold there except by the extremely hypothetical tie of his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that Sylvie reciprocated.  When the lawyer told him of the priest’s manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette, he certainly flattered Gouraud’s foible; but after analyzing the inner purpose of that advice and examining the ground all about him, the colonel thought he perceived in his ally the intention of separating him from Sylvie, and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron property into the hands of Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf.

Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his perspicacity possessed itself immediately of certain signs which betrayed her uneasiness.  He saw at once that she was under arms and had made this plan for seeing him alone.  As he already suspected Vinet of playing him some trick, he attributed the conference to the instigation of the lawyer, and was instantly on his guard, as he would have been in an enemy’s country,—­with an eye all about him, an ear to the faintest sound, his mind on the qui vive, and his hand on a weapon.  The colonel had the defect of never believing a single word said to him by a woman; so that when the old maid brought Pierrette on the scene, and told him she had gone to bed before midday, he concluded that Sylvie had locked her up by way of punishment and out of jealousy.