“No,” said Josephine, “that would hurt her culinary pride, and perhaps her affection:  only cover it up, dear, for just now I am not in the humor:  it rather turns me.”

It was covered up.  The sisters retired to rest.  In the morning Rose lifted the cover and found the plate cleared, polished.  She was astounded.

The large tapestried chamber, once occupied by Camille Dujardin, was now turned into a sitting-room, and it was a favorite on account of the beautiful view from the windows.

One day Josephine sat there alone with some work in her hand; but the needle often stopped, and the fair head drooped.  She heaved a deep sigh.  To her surprise it was echoed by a sigh that, like her own, seemed to come from a heart full of sighs.

She turned hastily round and saw Jacintha.

Now Josephine had all a woman’s eye for reading faces, and she was instantly struck by a certain gravity in Jacintha’s gaze, and a flutter which the young woman was suppressing with tolerable but not complete success.

Disguising the uneasiness this discovery gave her, she looked her visitor full in the face, and said mildly, but a little coldly, “Well, Jacintha?”

Jacintha lowered her eyes and muttered slowly,—­

“The doctor—­comes—­to-day,” then raised her eyes all in a moment to take Josephine off her guard; but the calm face was impenetrable.  So then Jacintha added, “to our misfortune,” throwing in still more meaning.

“To our misfortune?  A dear old friend—­like him?”

Jacintha explained.  “That old man makes me shake.  You are never safe with him.  So long as his head is in the clouds, you might take his shoes off, and on he’d walk and never know it; but every now and then he comes out of the clouds all in one moment, without a word of warning, and when he does his eye is on everything, like a bird’s.  Then he is so old:  he has seen a heap.  Take my word for it, the old are more knowing than the young, let them be as sharp as you like:  the old have seen everything.  We have only heard talk of the most part, with here and there a glimpse.  To know life to the bottom you must live it out, from the soup to the dessert; and that is what the doctor has done, and now he is coming here.  And Mademoiselle Rose will go telling him everything; and if she tells him half what she has seen, your secret will be no secret to that old man.”

“My secret!” gasped Josephine, turning pale.

“Don’t look so, madame:  don’t be frightened at poor Jacintha.  Sooner or later you must trust somebody besides Mademoiselle Rose.”

Josephine looked at her with inquiring, frightened eyes.

Jacintha drew nearer to her.