First there was the old baroness, a picturesque old lady with very white hair and piercing black eyes, with whom we have very little to do; then there was her eldest son, the present baron, for his father had been dead some years, and his beautiful young wife, whom he was so passionately fond of that he was jealous—­dreadfully jealous—­of her love for her baby, a little girl a few months old; and, lastly, there were the baron’s three younger brothers, who with Pere Yvon, the chaplain, made up the family party.  The two younger brothers were mere boys, still under Pere Yvon’s charge, for he acted as tutor to them as well as chaplain; but Leon de Thorens was a young man of five-and-twenty, only a year or two younger than the baron.  He was a fine, handsome man, tall and thin, with his mother’s fine black eyes and small well-cut nose and mouth.  He was of a bold, reckless nature, full of animal spirits, the very life of the house when he was at home, which was seldom, as he owned a yacht, in which he spent a great deal of his time.  He was his mother’s favourite son, and both he and she had often privately regretted that he was not the eldest.

The baron was smaller and fairer than Leon, and not so handsome, though there was a strong family likeness between the brothers.  He was of a quieter disposition, and his restlessness took an intellectual rather than a physical form, his wanderings being confined to the shelves of the valuable library which the chateau boasted, instead of extending over the seas on which Leon spent so much of his time.  The baron’s studious nature had endeared him very much to Pere Yvon, with whom he was a prime favourite, and who had never shown him any of the severity of which the other brothers often complained, but, on the contrary, had erred on the opposite side with the baron, whose wishes had never been crossed in any way, and who had grown up to think himself the one important person in the world to whom the convenience of everyone else must be sacrificed.

For the first year of their married life the pretty baroness had contributed as much as Pere Yvon to spoil her husband, whose every whim she had humoured until her baby was born, and then, much to his astonishment, the baron found that his beautiful, gentle wife had a will of her own, and, what was still worse in his eyes, a large place in her heart for someone else besides himself, and although that someone else was only his infant daughter, the baron was jealous.

In vain had he urged that the baby should be sent away to some peasant to nurse until it was a year or two old, as he and all his brothers had been, after a very common custom in French families.  No, the baroness would not hear of such a thing; she could not live without her baby, and every moment she could spare she spent by its cradle.  Indeed, so infatuated was she with her new possession, whose every movement was a delight to her, that she did not notice the baron became daily more and more morose, and that