Meantime, the baroness mourned for Raynal.  Her grief showed no decrease.  Rose even fancied at times she wore a gloomy and discontented look as well; but on reflection she attributed that to her own fancy, or to the contrast that had now sprung up in her sister’s beaming complacency.

Rose, when she found herself left day after day alone for hours, was sad and thought of Edouard.  And this feeling gained on her day by day.

At last, one afternoon, she locked herself in her own room, and, after a long contest with her pride, which, if not indomitable, was next door to it, she sat down to write him a little letter.  Now, in this letter, in the place devoted by men to their after-thoughts, by women to their pretended after-thoughts; i. e., to what they have been thinking of all through the letter, she dropped a careless hint that all the party missed him very much, “even the obnoxious colonel, who, by-the-by, has transferred his services elsewhere.  I have forgiven him that, because he has said civil things about you.”

Rose was reading her letter over again, to make sure that all the principal expressions were indistinct, and that the composition generally, except the postscript, resembled a Delphic oracle, when there was a hasty footstep, and a tap at her door, and in came Jacintha, excited.

“He is come, mademoiselle,” cried she, and nodded her head like a mandarin, only more knowingly; then she added, “So you may burn that.”  For her quick eye had glanced at the table.

“Who is come?” inquired Rose, eagerly.

“Why, your one?”

“My one?” asked the young lady, reddening, “my what?”

“The little one—­Edouard—­Monsieur Riviere.”

“Oh, Monsieur Riviere,” said Rose, acting nonchalance.  “Why could you not say so? you use such phrases, who can conjecture what you mean?  I will come to Monsieur Riviere directly; mamma will be so glad.”

Jacintha gone, Rose tore up the letter and locked up the pieces, then ran to the glass.  Etc.

Edouard had been so profoundly miserable he could stand it no longer; in spite of his determination not to visit Beaurepaire while it contained a rival, he rode over to see whether he had not tormented himself idly:  above all, to see the beloved face.

Jacintha put him into the salle a manger.  “By that you will see her alone,” said the knowing Jacintha.  He sat down, hat and whip in hand, and wondered how he should be received—­if at all.

In glides Rose all sprightliness and good-humor, and puts out her hand to him; the which he kisses.

“How could I keep away so long?” asked he vaguely, and self-astonished.

“How indeed, and we missing you so all the time!”

“Have you missed me?” was the eager inquiry.

“Oh, no!” was the cheerful reply; “but all the rest have.”

Presently the malicious thing gave a sudden start.