She was in bed for a fortnight, and as she was sitting outside the door on the first morning that she got up, the farmer suddenly came and planted himself before her.  “Well,” he said, “I suppose the affair is settled isn’t it?” She did not reply at first, and then, as he remained standing and looking at her intently with his piercing eyes, she said with difficulty:  “No, master, I cannot.”  He immediately flew into a rage.

“You cannot, girl; you cannot?  I should just like to know the reason why?” She began to cry, and repeated:  “I cannot.”  He looked at her, and then exclaimed angrily:  “Then I suppose you have a lover?” “Perhaps that is it,” she replied, trembling with shame.

The man got as red as a poppy, and stammered out in a rage:  “Ah!  So you confess it, you slut!  And pray who is the fellow?  Some penniless, half-starved ragamuffin, without a roof to his head, I suppose?  Who is it, I say?” And as she gave him no answer, he continued:  “Ah!  So you will not tell me.  Then I will tell you; it is Jean Baudu?”—­“No, not he,” she exclaimed.  “Then it is Pierre Martin?”—­“Oh! no, master.”

And he angrily mentioned all the young fellows in the neighborhood, while she denied that he had hit upon the right one, and every moment wiped her eyes with the corner of her blue apron.  But he still tried to find it out, with his brutish obstinacy, and, as it were, scratching at her heart to discover her secret, just as a terrier scratches at a hole to try and get at the animal which he scents inside it.  Suddenly, however, the man shouted:  “By George!  It is Jacques, the man who was here last year.  They used to say that you were always talking together, and that you thought about getting married.”

Rose was choking, and she grew scarlet, while her tears suddenly stopped and dried up on her cheeks, like drops of water on hot iron, and she exclaimed:  “No, it is not he, it is not he!” “Is that really a fact?” asked the cunning peasant, who partly guessed the truth; and she replied, hastily:  “I will swear it; I will swear it to you—­” She tried to think of something by which to swear, as she did not venture to invoke sacred things, but he interrupted her:  “At any rate, he used to follow you into every corner and devoured you with his eyes at meal times.  Did you ever give him your promise, eh?”

This time she looked her master straight in the face.  “No, never, never; I will solemnly swear to you that if he were to come to-day and ask me to marry him I would have nothing to do with him.”  She spoke with such an air of sincerity that the farmer hesitated, and then he continued, as if speaking to himself:  “What, then?  You have not had a misfortune, as they call it, or it would have been known, and as it has no consequences, no girl would refuse her master on that account.  There must be something at the bottom of it, however.”

She could say nothing; she had not the strength to speak, and he asked her again:  “You will not?” “I cannot, master,” she said, with a sigh, and he turned on his heel.