“You were thinking about it, eh?”

Madame Desvarennes bowed her head, twice, silently, and without adding another word, the pair fell into each other’s arms and wept.

From that day they hid nothing from each other, and shared their troubles and regrets in common.  The mistress unburdened her heart by making a full confession, and Michel, for the first time in his life, learned the depth of soul of his companion to its inmost recesses.  This woman, so energetic, so obstinate, was, as it were, broken down.  The springs of her will seemed worn out.  She felt despondencies and wearinesses until then unknown.  Work tired her.  She did not venture down to the offices; she talked of giving up business, which was a bad sign.  She longed for country air.  Were they not rich enough?  With their simple tastes so much money was unnecessary.  In fact, they had no wants.  They would go to some pretty estate in the suburbs of Paris, live there and plant cabbages.  Why work? they had no children.

Michel agreed to these schemes.  For a long time he had wished for repose.  Often he had feared that his wife’s ambition would lead them too far.  But now, since she stopped of her own accord, it was all for the best.

At this juncture their solicitor informed them that, near to their works, the Cernay estate was to be put up for sale.  Very often, when going from Jouy to the mills, Madame Desvarennes had noticed the chateau, the slate roofs of the turrets of which rose gracefully from a mass of deep verdure.  The Count de Cernay, the last representative of a noble race, had just died of consumption, brought on by reckless living, leaving nothing behind him but debts and a little girl two years old.  Her mother, an Italian singer and his mistress, had left him one morning without troubling herself about the child.  Everything was to be sold, by order of the Court.

Some most lamentable incidents had saddened the Count’s last hours.  The bailiffs had entered the house with the doctor when he came to pay his last call, and the notices of the sale were all but posted up before the funeral was over.  Jeanne, the orphan, scared amid the troubles of this wretched end, seeing unknown men walking into the reception-rooms with their hats on, hearing strangers speaking loudly and with arrogance, had taken refuge in the laundry.  It was there that Madame Desvarennes found her, playing, plainly dressed in a little alpaca frock, her pretty hair loose and falling on her shoulders.  She looked astonished at what she had seen; silent, not daring to run or sing as formerly in the great desolate house whence the master had just been taken away forever.